Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?

This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now.

One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.