to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.
I like persons better than principles, and i like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
The only horrible thing in the world is ennui. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow....