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If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.
“and I can believe anything, provided that it is incredible.”
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to overeducate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”
As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
He was afraid of certainty.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
For these things, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.
