The Only Substance Properly So Called Is

Our True History Is Scarcely Ever Deciphered By Others. The Chief Part Of The Drama Is A Monologue, Or Rather An Intimate Debate Between God, Our Conscience, And Ourselves. Tears, Grieves, Depressions, Disappointments, Irritations, Good And Evil Thoughts, Decisions, Uncertainties, Deliberations --all These Belong To Our Secret, And Are Almost All Incommunicable And Intransmissible, Even When We Try To Speak Of Them, And Even When We Write Them Down.

Melancholy Is At The Bottom Of Everything, Just As At The End Of All Rivers Is The Sea. Can It Be Otherwise In A World Where Nothing Lasts, Where All That We Have Loved Or Shall Love Must Die? Is Death, Then, The Secret Of Life? The Gloom Of An Eternal Mourning Enwraps, More Or Less Closely, Every Serious And Thoughtful Soul, As Night Enwraps The Universe.

Dreams Are Excursions Into The Limbo Of Things, A Semi-deliverance From The Human Prison.

To Feel Keenly The Poetry Of A Morning's Roses, One Has To Have Just Escaped From The Claws Of This Vulture Which We Call Sickness.

Common Sense Is The Measure Of The Possible; It Is Composed Of Experience And Prevision; It Is Calculation Applied To Life.