“I learned to love despair.”

I am not now That which I have been.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

What’s drinking? A mere pause from thinking!

The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Is your course measur’d for ye? Or do ye Sweep on in your unbounded revelry Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion,–at which my soul aches to think,– Intoxicated with eternity.

All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage.

Hearts will break – yet brokenly, live on.

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?

Always laugh when you can; it is cheap medicine. Merriment is a philosophy not well understood. It is the sunny side of existence.

Till taught by pain, men know not water’s worth.

What an antithetical mind! – tenderness, roughness – delicacy, coarseness – sentiment, sensuality – soaring and groveling, dirt and deity – all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

Self praise is no praise at all.

I live, but live to die: and, living, see nothing to make death hateful, save an innate clinging, a loathsome and yet all invincible instinct of life, which I abhor, as I despise myself, yet cannot overcome – and so I live. Would I had never lived!

You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

In order to learn, comprehend and rediscover that I can be and I want to be better at every moment.

I’m sure they learn a lot, and some of them, it makes them aware of what they wish to do. I was – that’s the way I was – autodidact.

You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes … without stirring it up from the bottom. That’s where the bitter dregs are!

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country.

I see all these students, and I admire them – they’re trying to learn something, they go to school, they do film school, they go on shoots, they help.

I studied how to mine a landfill and what to plant in it. It’s fascinating because you learn a new field each time.