Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.
it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.
I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action.
[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.
The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.
The more I see of dogs, the more I like children.
Surely, if life is good, it is good throughout its substance; we cannot separate men's activities from women's and say, these are worthy of praise and these unworthy.
Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?
Progress. There's a good deal too much o' this progress about nowadays, an', what's more, it'll have to stop.
I find you in all small and lovely things; in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden.
Youth knows no remedy for grief but death.
Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics; by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press; but their power exists for good or evil.
I like a bit of color myself, I must say. At my time of life, if you wear nothing but black, people might think you were too mean to change frocks between funerals.
I advise nobody to drown sorrow in cocoa. It is bad for the figure and it does not alleviate the sorrow.
why haven't we seventy lives? One is no use.
Progress? It ought to be stopped, that's what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he'd never have made hens, it stands to reason.
If we haven't a grouch against Fortune, we seem unable to avoid one against ourselves.
What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.
it is better to take experience, to suffer, to love, and to remember than to walk unscathed between the fires. I've had most immunities myself - the result of an independent income combined with a personality completely devoid of sexual attractions - the two fires of poverty and passion have therefore never burned me, and I am a lesser person for my safety.
the ruder lecturers are, and the louder their voices, the more converts they make to their opinions.
Why, why, when one writes, does a sort of shackle bind one's imagination? I become conscious of a deadening mediocrity, perhaps a form of mental cowardice, and I long to break free, to let my imagination take wings. It doesn't - yet.
the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.
What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.
public work brings a vicarious but assured sense of immortality. We may be poor, weak, timid, in debt to our landlady, bullied by our nieces, stiff in the joints, shortsighted and distressed; we shall perish, but the cause endures; the cause is great.
Most gay, conversational, careless, lovely city ... where one drinks golden Tokay until one feels most beautiful, and warm and loved - oh, Budapesth!
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