“A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.”

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table-a fool’s notion of history.

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.

The more one judges, the less one loves.

The victory always has a lot of parents but the defeat is always an orphan.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.

A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

Forgetting is the great secret of strong and creative lives.

One hour of love has a whole life in it.

He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.

Most days missing her is my only choice between death and dying.

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ’tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, with courage to endure.

In the end not every bleeding thing dies; at least, not like a paper plays in fire.

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

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.

Back in the old days, a man could just get sick and die. Now they have to wage a battle. So my Uncle Bert is waging a courageous battle, which I’ve seen, because I go and visit him. And this is the battle: he’s lying in the hospital bed, with a thing in his arm, watching Matlock on the TV.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.