“Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries.”

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Invisible things are the only realities.

Leave my loneliness unbroken.

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.

Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge.

From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.

The world is a great ocean, upon which we encounter more tempestuous storms than calms.

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect – in terror.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

You have to be a speedy reader because there’s so so much to read.

My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

A book, a book full of human touches, of shirts, a book without loneliness, with men and tools, a book is victory.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Ordinary people simply don’t know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.

Read. Travel. Read. Ask. Read. Learn. Read. Connect. Read.