Literature Quotes - Page 98

It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.

Evil is only good perverted.

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Faith never makes a confession.

The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.