The Church is a system, – but whether it is as much founded on the teaching of our Lord, who was divine, as on the teaching of St. Paul, who was not divine, is a question to me of much perplexity.
What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?
Patriotism is understood to be that virtue which consists in serving one’s country; but in what way is this ‘Patria’ or country served by slaying its able bodied men in thousands?
And out of heart’s pain comes heart’s peace; and out of desire, accomplishment.
The Press nowadays is not a literary press; classic diction and brilliancy of style do not distinguish it by any means.
Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, – nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call ‘logic.’ The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.
I must not say what I truly think, or you will tell me I flatter you-but I can only speak what I feel-and very often I cannot even do that when the feeling is very deep.
There is no wealth but love.
A fine morning’s killing, ay! All their necks wrung – all dead birds! Once they could fly – fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now – and sold cheap in the open market!
The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence.
What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.
If we choose to be no more than clods of clay, then we shall be used as clods of day for braver feet to tread on.
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!
Love clamors far more incessantly and passionately at a closed gate than an open one!
Imagination is the supreme endowment of the poet and romanticist. It is a kind of second sight, which conveys the owner of it to places he has never seen, and surrounds him with strange circumstances of which he is merely the spiritual eyewitness.
A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime.
Hate is a grand, a strong quality! It makes nations, it builds up creeds! If men loved one another what should they need of a Church?
Flowers are like visible messages from God.
Greatness is always envied – it is only mediocrity that can boast of a host of friends.
Nothing gives small minds a better handle for hatred than superiority...