Emotions and Feelings

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

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Our throats were tight as tourniquets.

Our throats were tight as tourniquets.

But this invites the occult mind,

If we cannot eschew hatred, at least let us eschew group hatred.

Rouse the lion from his lair.

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift . . . that’s nausea.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and then he is no longer a thief.

The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.

The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.

[ 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.

Equal to the gods seems to me that man who sits facing you and hears you nearby sweetly speaking and softly laughing. This sets my heart to fluttering in my breast, for when I look on you a moment, then can I speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a cold sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over, and I am paler than grass, and I feel that I am near to death.

Equal to the gods seems to me that man who sits facing you and hears you nearby sweetly speaking and softly laughing. This sets my heart to fluttering in my breast, for when I look on you a moment, then can I speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a cold sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over, and I am paler than grass, and I feel that I am near to death.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

Happiness lies in the consciousness we have of it.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?

Malefactors of great wealth.