“Without death in the world, existence in it would soon become, through over-population, the most frightful of curses.”

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world–without friends or country, home or kindred.

Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it–to realize it to the full–to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.

There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it.

Fame – a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,–like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

A great destiny needs a generous diet. What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!

Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

The reveries of the dreamer advance his hopes, but not their realization. One good hour of earnest work is worth them all.

This is the curse of an evil deed, that it incites and must bring forth more evil.

When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.

Even when the blood in my veins is the same as them, every cell in my body is against becoming like them. What a curse it is to hate the very thing that birth you.

If you’re working at the factory and you’re cursing every day that you get up, at all costs get out of it. You’ll just make yourself ill.

You’re always cursing, you’re always praying and you’re always making love. It ain’t do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

She spends an eternity as shelter for men who curse her when the storm passes.

What a blessing to be hurt yet see the good, what a curse to always understand and never be understood.

We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.