The root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

I see through most people; I'm hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they've got in them.

... why do people who live in the country always give themselves such airs?

For love... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.

It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.