“How slow life is, how violent hope is.”

“How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting.”

“I wonder how many men and women, kids and dogs, go through life in a state of modest misery; how much communal coldness there is, how much extinguished hope.”

“Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.”

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our breasts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”

“Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!”

“How noble and ennobling!—but within
How mean, how poor, how pitiful, how mix'd
With base alloy; how Disappointment tracks
The steps of Hope; how Envy dogs success;
How every victor's crown is lined with thorns,
And worn mid scoffs!”

“It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?”

“When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life’s morning.”

“Hope is treacherous, but how can you live without it?”