“To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.”

Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

What ought a man be? Well, my short answer is ‘himself’.

When you’ve sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don’t do it second time.

Writing has… been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.

Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.

It’s a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.

The spectacles of experience; through them you will see more clearly a second time.

Oh courage, oh yes! If only one had that. Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

The sea possesses a power over one’s moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.

If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life

Don’t use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.

You see, there are some people that one loves, and others that perhaps one would rather be with.

The strongest men are the most alone.

Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.

But a scientific man must live in a little bit of style.

When she’s drenched in agony and soaked in pain, her smile holds the art this world is dying to learn.

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.

I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn’t want to be an academic.

Forgiveness gives birth to freedom so forgive them and set yourself free from the delusion of their chains and from the agony in your reality.

We don’t like trading agony for money

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

When most people don’t know what real agony is, some of us live on the hope that “someday things might get better”, being not really sure if they ever will.