Our greatest heart-treasure is a knowledge that there is in creation an individual to whom our existence is necessary - some one who is part of our life as we are part of theirs, some one in whose life we feel assured our death would leave a gap for a day or two.

... we each have our fleeting hour.

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.

there is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible.

My mother is a good woman - a very good woman - and I am, I think, not quite all criminality, but we do not pull together. I am a piece of machinery which, not understanding, my mother winds up the wrong way, setting all the wheels of my composition going in creaking discord.

Every now and again it would be considered wholesome for me to be more with people of my own age. Demotion to such company was a sapless exile. Their inanity was insufferable.