1854–1900

seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.

small iron-barred window

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.

The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.

The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man’s life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others.

With people of our own rank it is different. With us, prison makes a man a pariah.

Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.

I amused myself with being a flâneur, a dandy, a man of fashion.

I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy.