Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.

Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of the traditional forms.

The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.

Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.