The man, with his brain, can pierce the intoxicating mirage of things and contemplate a frozen universe in the most perfect indifference to him and his dreams.

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

Life creeps slowly upward.... When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILIZATION!

A man with a club [bat] is a law-maker, a man to be obeyed, but not necessarily conciliated.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomized life as a voracious appetite, and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.