He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being.

To delight the ear and the eye is a mere sensual indulgence;—true poetry strikes at the soul.

The glory dies not, and the grief is past.

I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse.

There is this value in books, that they enable us to converse with the dead. There is something in this beyond the mere intrinsic worth of what they have left us.

This is what people were looking at all day? How embarrassing! I looked like Quasimodo! My guests were exceptional actors.

I wish I could recommend the experience of not being killed to everyone.

When not eating, I like shopping; although I'm afraid I've become a bit of a cliche.

One has not the right to betray even a traitor. Traitors must be fought, got betrayed.

She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her she should be.

I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do.

Gee, I never thought I had an effect on people until I was in Korea.

If it's one thing we learned from the first book, it's that you don't have to be a prizefighter, or a world-renowned architect, or a concert violinist to have been affected by the power of words.

I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.

Old wives' tales are not enough in a day when old wives and old men, too, are constantly moving away from their labours.