So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape.

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.