Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magical nothing.

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

Men prefer the false due to habit, passion, will. Preference for truth is rare. Men are ruled by their fear of truth.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also - He above all - is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.