People marry through a variety of other reasons, and with varying results: but to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy.

The realization that life is absurdand cannot be an end, but only abeginning. This is a truth nearly allgreat minds have taken as their starting point.

I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong

In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility.

Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.

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