When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

It is only very ugly or very beautiful women who ever hide their faces .

I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

One's dreams must be big enough so as not to lose sight of them.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.