The deadly Hydra now is the hydra of Equality. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity is the three-fanged serpent.

I can't do with mountains at close quarters -- they are always in the way, and they are so stupid, never moving and never doing anything but obtrude themselves.

Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.

But the effort, the effort! And as the marrow is eaten out of a man's bones and the soul out of his belly, contending with the strange rapacity of savage life, the lower stage of creation, he cannot make the effort any more.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books -- repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.

The one woman who never gives herself is your free woman, who is always giving herself.

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.