So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by life, and whether this is living.

Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins--of happiness and unhappiness.

literature is the record of our discontent.

The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

You would get longer livelier and more frequent letters from me, if it weren't for the Christian religion. How that bell tolling at the end of the garden, dum dum, dum dum, annoys me! Why is Christianity so insistent and so sad?

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.