Well, we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says [in Le dernier jour d'un condamné]:... we have an interval, and then our place k...nows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest in art and song. For our one chance is in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. High passions give one this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, political or religious enthusiasm, or the "enthusiasm of humanity" [in Auguste Comte's Le système de politique positive]. Only, be sure it is passion, that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for t...he most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for lovi...ng or hating better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they ...weary themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhym...e, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »