Alice James

“To be dead, and have it all over with—to be in a state of final, comfortable, unconsciousness.”

“The difficulty is that I am not a man of genius and that my friends are.”

“I wonder whether if I had given myself out in some abstract direction I might not have been cured of my abnormal impulse to scrutinize.”

“It's a pity to be content with a flawed perfection.”

“How sick one gets of being 'good,' how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make just one demonic scene.”

“I am not going to be a ridiculously optimistic invalid, for I should like to be a beautifully patient one.”

“One has to live what one can, not what one would.”

“Though I have no productive faculty, I have a certain receptive faculty.”

“I make it a rule to try everything.”

“My circumstances are so benign, so ridiculously healthy, that to be other than ecstatic is simply a sign of a weak head or a vicious heart.”

“I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather what doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of loneliness and desolation which abides with me.”

“As the light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I have only to concentrate my attention upon the few details that remain.”