It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too

Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. …The words of the dying God crossed his memory: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.