It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand for.

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

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.

I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

It is a wise provision that youth cannot see what it owes the previous generation. This is a chicken that comes back to roost in heavier years.