Alice James

"One has a greater sense of degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience."

"The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape."

"Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?"

"Though I have no productive worth I have a certain value as an indestructible quantity."

"Truly nothing is to be expected but the unexpected."

"It is so comical to hear oneself called old even at ninety I suppose!"

"If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich..."

"One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience."