Nothing but dust and fundamentalists.
Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Few people do business well who do nothing else
At any age we must cherish illusions, consolatory or merely pleasant; in youth, they are omnipresent; in old age we must search for them, or even invent them. But with all that, boredom is their natural and inevitable accompaniment.
Physical ills are the taxes laid upon this wretched life; some are taxed higher, and some lower, but all pay something.
As kings are begotten and born like other men, it is to be presumed that they are of the human species; and perhaps, had they thesame education, they might prove like other men. But, flattered from their cradles, their hearts are corrupted, and their heads are turned, so that they seem to be a species by themselves. . . . Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk with it from their infancy, like old drinkers, they require dreams.
She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and donning them for an hour, a day, a week. We think in some ways, we have all done this our whole lives, searching for the book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let. As though we could walk in and look around and say to the gray-haired landlady behind us, "We'll take it. "
It is too late to start For destinations not of the heart. I must stay here with my hurt.
I also paint and enjoy acrylic medium; some of my close friends have paintings I did for them.
All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.