All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.

The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.