Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man.
Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.
In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
I have great faith in fools: self-confidence my friends will call it.
I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry!