Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and read more

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

I hate and I love. Perchance you ask why I do that. I know not,
but I feel that read more

I hate and I love. Perchance you ask why I do that. I know not,
but I feel that I do and I am tortured.
[Lat., Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio,
sed fieri sentio et excrucior.]

...passionate intensity may serve as a substitute for confidence.

...passionate intensity may serve as a substitute for confidence.

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made read more

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go off in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he has found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results.

The envious only hate the excellence they cannot reach.

The envious only hate the excellence they cannot reach.

Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, deprecating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a read more

Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, deprecating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.

Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.

Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.

There's no hate lost between us.

There's no hate lost between us.

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance read more

Children sweeten labours; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the care of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity of generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works, are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men; which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed.