Emotions and Feelings

If only the sense of actuality can be lulled—and it sleeps for ever in most historians—there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

That which probably hears more stupidities than anything else in the world is a painting in a museum.

Take love when love is given, / But never think to find it / A sure escape from sorrow / Or a complete repose.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

Though 1 know he loves me, / Tonight my heart is sad; / His kiss was not so wonderful / As all the dreams I had.

The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,—parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.

A child shows gratitude the way a woman/Shows she likes a pretty dress—/Puts it on and takes it off again—

Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

It is not that the Englishman can't feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks—his pipe might fall out if he did.

Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier generations?

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how that can be? / I know not, but I feel the agony.

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how that can be? / I know not, but I feel the agony.

It is the peculiarity of the bore that he is the last person to find himself out.