The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

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.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.

A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.