I had no illusions about you,’ he said. ‘I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved...

we do not write as we want but as we can

She says it’s really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming an universal rule of action for all men.

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.

Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They’ve given up all for nothing. They’ve been cheated. They’re dupes.”Waddington reflected for a little while....

Melville, by his own account, spent four months in the valley. He was well treated. He made friends with a girl called Fayaway, swam and boated with her, and except for his fear of being...

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to...

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself:...

Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his...

A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.

I don’t see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,’ said Phillip. ‘That’s only a laborious form of idleness.’But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind...

In the first place it’s not true that people improve as you know them better: they don’t. That’s why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best...

Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.

You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the...

Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?

Man’s desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him,...

Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet’s history; and as there had been a beginning of life...

The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

I repeat here what you will find in my first chapter, that the only thing that signifies to you in a book is what it means to you, and if your opinion is at variance...

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power...

I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are...

Men seek but one thing in life – their pleasure.

When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.

I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord’s Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their...

We Americans… like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.

…her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason…

You say that Caesar Borgia suffered the just punishment of his crimes. He was destroyed not by his misdeeds, but by circumstances over which he had no control. His wickedness was an irrelevant accident. In...

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

We paint from within outward – if we force our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we don’t it ignores us; but we are the same. We don’t attach any meaning...

[The goal is] “liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from...

It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they’re disappointed if we can’t...

I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

I wish to deal only with the masterpieces which the consensus of opinion for a long time has accepted as supreme. We are all supposed to have read them; it is a pity that so...

Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their...

We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbors. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional...

As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.

One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.

You’ve been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to...

I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never...

The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, seemed capable of any adventure.

…it is well known that to praise someone whose rivalry you do not dread is often a very good way of putting a spoke in the wheel of someone whose rivalry you do.