Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distorts the truth; deforms the mind; fetters the will.

Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female: and in the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain, the woman predominates over the man...If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties.

O friendship, I too will press flowers between the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets!

To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.

Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.

I am reading Henry James...and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.