“A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.”

“What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”

“In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.”

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”

“A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So does it accord with good sleep.”

“These trumpeters of reality are bad musicians.”

“A hearty meal is easier to digest than one that is too small.”