“It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.”

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.

All a man can betray is his conscience.

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force–nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self knowledge.

But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker – may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.

We live as we dream – alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

Your strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.

Betrayal is beautiful.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of Her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

Man has his being in truth–if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying–but of acting against one’s conviction.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.