He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

Men of thoughts should have nothing to do with action.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.