“Does one love a statue?" she demanded. "Shall I caress a picture? Shall I rain tears or kisses over the mere semblance of a life that does not live, shall I fondle hands that never return my clasp?...”

“Curious that it is impossible for a man to be original without attracting around him a set of unoriginal minds, as though he were a honey-pot and they the flies!”

“Was it worth while, he thought, to be so wise, if wisdom made one at times so sad? Was it well to sacrifice Faith for Fact, when Faith was so warm and Fact so cold? Was it better to be a dreamer of...”

“Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as poss...”

“There was something else,--something quite undefinable, that gave a singular glow and radiance to the whole countenance, and suggested the burning of a light through alabaster,--a creeping of some ...”

“Let me be mad, then, by all means! mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world! Vive la folie! Vive l'amour! Vive l'animalisme! Vive le Diable!”

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”

“If only [people] understood that every thought is both false and true! False by one-sidenedness resulting from man's inability to embrace the whole truth, and true as an expression of one fact of h...”

“Ihr redet, wenn ihr aufhrt mit euren Gedanken in Frieden zu sein.”

“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”

“I refused David Letterman's proposal of marriage for obvious reasons, but thanks for asking.”

“Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I'd rather be out playing.”

“He laid his head on Reid's shoulder and shut his eyes, buoyed toward sleep by the affectionate comb of fingers through his hair. He could stay just so, and be content for all his days.”

“What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.”

“Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.”