And it is quite as fair to observe that ignorance and slovenliness and the tradition itself are the inevitable products of just one thing: poverty.
Home: it was a phrase one used to mean four walls behind which one slept. There had never been a home.
Everyone knew vice was bad for any real revolutionary climate.
Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
Is bravery, then, no more than pride? Because there are none to witness the shame shall I retreat?
I am not asleep, nor am I awake, and in my reverie things I have seen mingle with things I have read or heard, like rivers of different colour or clarity meeting.
Fear has always seemed to me to run a course, and at its climax the body and perhaps the spirit defend themselves by drawing on some new and fresh source of strength.
There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth.
I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art.
Gone, those times. Closed, sealed, and gone.
In heaven’s name what kind of monster would I be, what would I do? Just trying to imagine it was so frightful I wanted to scream.
Possibly the most important thing to a human being, once he is alive and possessed of the means of sustaining life, is that he should do the work he cares most to do and is best capable of doing.
I don’t know what disturbs me more: that I killed him, or that I could do it again.
Most people in Leadington, like most people elsewhere, are either asleep or dead.
He who has the right to sit in judgment also has the obligation to listen to the defendant’s statement.
She seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved.
Now that we know where we’re going, let’s go there. It’s so nice to know where you’re going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.
Yellow dust was dropping from the lime trees, and wild roses grew on the trunks of the apple trees. Pale red, gorged red, fiery, aching, harsh as anger, sweet as drugs.
A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.
All sorts of thoughts filled my mind - how brightly my reputation had shone, and now how easily in an evil moment it had been dimmed or rather completely blotted out.
If you’re in love with somebody, you’re in love with them, and they can do all sorts of things, be as mean as hell, and you’ll forgive them or just not bother about it. At least, some women will.
Here in St. Cloud's it is high time something was done for the good of someone. What better place for improvement could there be for self-improvement, and for the good of all than a place where evil has so clearly flourished if not altogether triumphed?
Music is a democratic form of art. You don’t need money to buy it or education to study it. All you need is a pair of these [...] Ears.
There was the human body, which was so clearly designed to want babies--and then there was the human mind, which was so confused about the matter.
Thanks to this education, I have to experience a new sensation in order to appreciate new pain.
Don't we all write about love? When men do it, it's a political comment. When women do it, it's just a love story.
For many years I have known that you had escaped this realization of our intrinsic weakness, of our humanity, but I knew you must come to it, for we all do.
Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm.
The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.
There was some truth in that. Then I didn’t feel like drowning.
If you think of the dark
as a black park
and the moon as a bounced ball,
then there’s nothing to be frightened of
at all.
When I was lonely, confused and angry, the ocean was always there, a vast salty poultice sucking the poison from my system.
How curious and interesting is the parallel — as far as poverty of biographical details is concerned — between Satan and Shakespeare.
Church is full of people with plenty to say and nothing to do. You'd think some of them would help us instead of talk about us, but I guess it's easier to say you love Jesus and harder to act like him.
I have heard men talk of the blessings of freedom but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.
I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.
On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with atangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres ofdeep water affect the body of the diver.
Death – mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity – would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither seeking his victims.
For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and of course, its consequences.
I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray.
Some people build fences to keep people out...and other people build fences to keep people in.
I am growing up. I am losing my illusions perhaps to acquire new ones.
My dear Gerald, women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
All knowledge, we find, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs, and if these are rejected, nothing is left.