Emotions and Feelings

[ To a customs official upon arriving in New York in 1882 :] I have nothing to declare but my genius.

This is one of the compliments that mediocrity pays to those who are not mediocre.

This is one of the compliments that mediocrity pays to those who are not mediocre.

Every American bride is taken there [Niagara Falls], and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,

I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.

Fugit inreparabile tempus .

Dieu créa l’homme, et ne le trouvant pas assez seul, il lui donne une compagne pour lui faire mieux sentir sa solitude .

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

The other day we had a long discourse with[Lady Orkney] about love; and she told us asaying . . . which I thought excellent, that inmen, desire begets love ; and in women, love begetsdesire .

The other day we had a long discourse with[Lady Orkney] about love; and she told us asaying . . . which I thought excellent, that inmen, desire begets love ; and in women, love begetsdesire .

But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride , it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.

But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride , it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Every true passion thinks only of itself.

Every true passion thinks only of itself.

[ Remark, 1925 :] The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses; Christ, Spinoza, and myself.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

Someone asked Sophocles, “How is your sex-life now? Are you still able to have a woman?” He replied, “Hush, man; most gladly indeed am I rid of it all, as though I had escaped from a mad and savage master.”

I . . . once read the Old Testament and the four Gospels straight through, from a vainglorious desire to do what nobody else had done.

[ Of a girl before marriage :] As an apple reddens on the high bough; high atop the highest bough the apple pickers passed it by—no, not passed it by, but they could not reach it.

It’s with my brush that I make love.