I’m not going to kill you, Nora. I don’t kill people who are important to me. And you top the list.
Everything that you do under compulsion goes to build up attachment.
There is no other teacher but your own soul.
My countrymen should have nerves of steel, muscles of iron, and minds like thunderbolt.
My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.
There is no motion in a straight line. A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
They're always such alive females. And also, all those love stories - no man in Austen has ever fallen in love with a female heroine because she's pretty or beautiful or has long, blonde hair. They fall in love with them because of who they are, because of their vibrancy and their intelligence and if only we were teaching that a bit more in schools.
On one of my birthdays I did 1,000 chin-ups and 1,000 push-ups. For my 70th birthday I towed 70 boats with 70 people in it, my feet and hands tied-my hands were in handcuffs, my feet were tied together-and I towed these boats a mile-and-a-half in Long Beach Harbor. For my 93rd birthday I'm going to tow my wife across the bathtub.
. . . Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose.
The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.