Reading a great book causes jolts and frights.
Reading civilized the inner life.
Reading more than life teaches us to recognize ethos and pathos.
Forgetting and remembering are governed by laws, but we cannot find out what they are.
Fearful of sentimentality, I disown my tears and melting heart.
If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment.
Your love for me is founded in a sentiment. My love for you is founded in the body. A precarious interchange.
Outside literature, high-flown sentiments are merely exasperating.
Under attack, sentiments harden into dogma.
Paradise endangered: garden snakes and mice are appearing in the shadowy corners of Dutch Old Master paintings.
No need to be sentimental to mourn the loss of Paradise.
Cheap thrill: moral outrage revels in its own innocence and in the guilt of the wicked Others.
My father liked to moralize, and so do I. But he was in earnest, while I am embarrassed and pretend that I am merely being witty.
A fastidious taste is best indoors, away from nature and the city.
Original sin reassures us that our slip was not the first.
Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.
Lovers remain in the dark, working hard to keep out daylight.
The nonsense that charms is close to sense.
Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed.
Sometimes I dread loneliness more than bores. Other times, the reverse.