What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.

I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life.

I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time's toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself.

I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.

Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?

Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.