To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.