A fate is not a punishment.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

The actor's realm is that of the fleeting.

The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.

Archie Goodwin, after Carolyn Pratt tells him Lily Rowan will ruin her brother, chapter 3: No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a tic…

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best!