We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose“, cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. “ It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.