“There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.”
“But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.”
“The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one’s family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.”
“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”
“This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.”
“No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
“Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.”
“We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.”
“Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.”
“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
“Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.”
“No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.”
“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”
“The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”
“It is a good lesson – though it may often be a hard one – for a man… to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”
“Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.”
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence…”
“A forced smile is uglier than a frown.”
“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. ”
“I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you.”
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
“Moonlight is sculpture.”
“What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so in exorable as one’s self!”
“Happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release…”
“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream : it may be so at the moment after death.”
“What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.”
“I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.”
“The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.”
“Do anything, save to lie down and die!”
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
“Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.”
“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.”
“What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!”
“Time flies over us, but leaves it shadow behind.”
“Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.”
“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.”
“A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.”
“No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.”
“A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.”
“It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.”
“The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.”
“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”
“A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!”
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
“It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.”
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. ”
“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.”
“You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”
“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!”
“All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.”
“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”
“Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.”
“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”
“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”
“Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.”
“…happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release…”
“Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.”
“When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.”
“Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world.”
“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.”
“Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream“
“To do nothing is the way to be nothing.”
“We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”
“Life is made up of marble and mud.”
