I am a part and parcel of God.

I feel some unwillingness to quit the remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we are leaving the old.

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.

Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge.