When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.

Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest? He grows a forest to hide it in.

It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

To be simple is the best thing in the world.