What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom. Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.