To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.

As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.

We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision.

The boxer's ring is the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed.

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding

Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.