Book: Summing up

Love is just a bad joke that nature joking with people to achieve procreation.

More lasting pleasure is derived from things less perfect. Because they were not all successful, they are forced very much to the imagination.

I have no desire to spend too much time with boring people, but interesting people too. Secular communication bores me. Many find in conversation and entertainment, and rest. To me it is always worth the effort. In my youth, when I stuttered, a long conversation with me, it was exhausting, and even now, although I to a large extent recovered, this is for me a difficult thing. I'm relieved when I can go somewhere and relax.

Simplicity is not so obvious advantage is clarity. I always aspired to it, because I have no talent for pomp of language. To a certain extent I admire the splendor of other writers, although in large doses I difficult to digest. One page of Ruskin I read with pleasure, but after twenty feel tired. A smooth period; dignified epithet; the word, rich in poetic associations; the subordinate, which offer gains weight and solemnity; the stately rhythm as wave after wave in the open sea, - all this, of course, there is something uplifting. Words connected in this way, affect the ear as music. The impression is rather sensual than intellectual, the beauty of the sounds seemed to be exempt from the need to think about the meaning. But the words of the great despots, they exist because of their meaning, and distracted from the sense, distracted from the text at all. Thoughts begin to scatter. This style of writing requires a befitting her theme. It is impossible to write in a lofty style about nothing.

I don't see much difference between people. They are all a mixture of great and small, of the virtues and vices, of nobility and baseness. Some more character, or more opportunity, so they can give more will, whatever his instincts, but potentially they are all the same.

Perfection just a little boring.

Good style does not have to keep track of efforts. Written should seem a happy accident.

Your unhappiness is to learn to accept without murmuring; but calmly look at other people's misfortunes that so often seem undeserved, cannot be philosophers, obsessed with the perfection of the absolute.

Kindness is a reaction of humor to the tragic senselessness of fate.

Most of us confused, when we say compliments. It is strange that believers imagine that God is more pleased to hear the compliments that they slavishly he spends. In my youth I had a friend, an elderly man, often invited me to visit. He was religious and in the morning, gathered his family and said prayers. But his prayer was crossed out with a pencil all the phrases where praised God. He said that there is nothing vulgarae than the praise of man in the face, and, as a gentleman, does not allow, that it might please God - he after all is also a gentleman. At the time, it seemed to me very weird. Now I believe that my friend was very intelligent.

In big cities people are reminded of the stones, pour in the bag: their sharp edges gradually disappearing, and they become smooth as a pebble.

In my opinion, what's right for one may be wrong for another. I myself most wanted to be left alone, but I found that it is a rare case; other people if I left them alone, thought me unresponsive, indifferent, selfish.

I don't have an innate faith in people. I'm inclined to expect evil rather than good. It's the price we have to pay for a sense of humor. Having a sense of humor, a delight in the vagaries of human nature; do not trust the noble declarations, always doskias unworthy motives, which are hidden behind them; the discrepancy between appearance and reality entertains you, and where you can't find it, tempted to create it. Sometimes close eyes to truth, goodness and beauty, because they give a little food feeling funny. Humorist will immediately take notice of the quack, but not always recognize the Saint.

Life is too short to do yourself what you can do for money other.