People who take the time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve.
We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all.
Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.
Be kind to yourself and to others. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. I was told that every day of my childhood.
You think too much. ' 'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.
Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.