Martin Eden

If I don’t like a thing, I don’t like it, that’s all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can’t follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike.

And yet I am stifled with desire to tell.

There seems to be so much in me I want to say. But it is all so big. I can’t find ways to say what is really in me. Sometimes it seems to me that all the world, all life, everything, had taken up residence inside of me and was clamoring for me to be the spokesman. I feel-oh, I can’t describe it-I feel the bigness of it, but when I speak, I babble like a little child. It is a great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into the selfsame feeling and sensation. It is a lordly task.

It is easy to be kind.

And to think of it, I dreamed in my innocence that the persons who sat in the high places, who lived in fine houses and had educations and bank accounts, were worth while!

One acts according to one’s lights, and more than that one cannot do.

It was the old tragedy of insularity trying to serve as mentor to the universal.

Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked. Small wonder the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed by their own slavery. A job was to them a golden fetich before which they fell down and worshipped.

The function of beauty is joy-making.

I must have the real or nothing. An illusion that won’t convince is a palpable lie.

The human organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life.

You are so big and generous that you challenge me to equal generousness... I’m sorry I came here to-day and met you. But it can’t be helped now, and I never expected it would turn out this way. But look here, Lizzie. I can’t begin to tell you how much I like you. I do more than like you. I admire and respect you. You are magnificent, and you are magnificently good.
But what’s the use of words?