Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.

Everybody in American seems in a rush to catch a train.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.