Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.

To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.

These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.

Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.

Success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.

He had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs.