“Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.”

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.

Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.

Find me someone who has gone to the darkest parts of their own character where they were so close to their own self-destruction and found a way to get up and out of it, and I will bow on my knees to you. You’re my teacher.

A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.

My breaths give out the stench of dark black pain, that rooted from the poison you gifted me with love.

I seek out the good but keep my senses on alert but then there are moments when all I want to do is drown in the sea.

Darkness attracts me, it’s the only time, I can cry in peace.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

This idea of perpetual happiness is crazy and overrated, because those dark moments fuel you for the next bright moments; each one helps you appreciate the other.