An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.

The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage