The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.