Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.

Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!

What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?