The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions – none more so than the most capable.
I believe in the compelling power of love.
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.
Oh, the moon is fair tonight along the Wabash, From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay; Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming On the banks of the Wabash, far away.
Theodore Dreiser Should ought to write nicer.
All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.
How dismal is progress without publicity.
Why must women torment me so?
We who feel that justice is not being done have but one thing to do: that is fight, by argument, by example, by insistence on fair play wherever we have the power to do so. The rest is in the hands of the Lord, or nature, which swings, apparently, from one extreme to another.
Your writer, your scientist, your chief official, all have lost the power to revive the early illusion concerning fame and high place. Their beauty and delight is like the mirage in the heavens, only plain to the eye outside; within is nothing.
Nature, machine-like, works definitely and heartlessly, if in the main beautifully. Hence, if we, as individuals, do not make this dream of a god or what he stands for us real in our thoughts and deeds, then he is not real or true.
If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.
Shakespeare, I come !
A thought will color a world for us.
I have seen youths bright eyed and fair groping after bubbles in rapture, and conceiving them diamonds and the glitter of fine jewels, until their hand closed over a something that was not to be felt nor longer seen, mere colored air.
If you have that unconquerable urge to write, nothing will stop you from writing.
To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.
I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.
I will kneel and strike my breast, then touch the dust with my forehead; I will, I will. Only do not forsake me, oh god of beauty.
You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It’s chemical. What are you going to do about it?