Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

Sometime you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance- that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long someday to feel

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?