“What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.”

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

We live as we dream – alone.

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance.

Perhaps life is just that- a dream and a fear.

It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

Going home must be like going to render an account.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you’ll have to do something for it.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget.

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.

Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.

The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe.

It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.

Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.

When your intelligence don’t tell you something ain’t right, your conscience gives you a tap you on the shoulder and says ‘Hold on’. If it don’t, you’re a snake.