The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. |
Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied? |
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. |
Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth. |
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully? |
Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. |
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. |
A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back. |
If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share. |
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. |
Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. |
Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory. |
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. |
It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer. |
As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. |
One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly. |
Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. |
Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. |
The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. |
Language is wine upon the lips. |