The Sorrows of Satan; or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire

But a man gifted with original thoughts and the power of expressing them, appears to be regarded by everyone in authority as much worse than the worst criminal, and all the ‘jacks-in-office’ unite to kick him to death if they can.

takes its colours from the mind, my dear friend;”—he said—“If you discover evil suggestions in my music, the evil, I fear, must be in your own nature.

The finest actor is he who play the comedy of life perfectly, as i aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, weep well, laugh well and die well, it is all pure acting, because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal spirit who is real- who cannot act, who-is and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body's lies

Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive.

no fame is actually worth much now-a-days,—because it is not classic fame, strong in reposeful old-world dignity,—it is blatant noisy notoriety merely.

I am going to make you what you may perhaps consider rather a singular proposition. It is this, that if you don’t like me, say so at once, and we will part now, before we have time to know anything more of each other, and I will endeavour not to cross your path again unless you seek me out. But if on the contrary, you do like me,—if you find something in my humour or turn of mind congenial to your own disposition, give me your promise that you will be my friend and comrade for a while, say for a few months at any rate. I can take you into the best society, and introduce you to the prettiest women in Europe as well as the most brilliant men. I know them all, and I believe I can be useful to you. But if there is the smallest aversion to me lurking in the depths of your nature”—here he paused,—then resumed with extraordinary solemnity—“in God’s name give it full way and let me go,—because I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem!

Wealth acts merely as a kind of mirror to show you human nature at its worst.

Beauty combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eye and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is Nature’s revenge on the outraged body,—and do you know, Eternity’s revenge on the impure Soul is extremely similar?

I confess I like a woman to have a certain amount of temper. I can not endure your preternaturally amiable female, who can find nothing in the length or breath of the globe to move to any other expression than a fatuous smile. I love to see the danger flash in bright eyes, the delicate quiver in of pride in the lines of a lovely mouth, and the warm flush of indignation on fair cheeks. It all suggests spirit, and untamed will; and rouse in a man the love of mastery that is born in his nature, urging him to conquer and subdue that which seems unconquerable.

all the best, greatest, purest and worthiest things in life are beyond all market-value and that the gifts of the gods are not for sale.

If men were true to their immortal instincts and to the God that made them,—if they were generous, honest, fearless, faithful, reverent, unselfish, ... if women were pure, brave, tender and loving,—can you not imagine that in the strong force and fairness of such a world, ‘Lucifer, son of the Morning’ would be moved to love instead of hate?—that the closed doors of Paradise would be unbarred—and that he, lifted towards his Creator on the prayers of pure lives, would wear again his Angel’s crown? Can you not realize this, even by way of a legendary story?

I know that many men are living in the tangles of sin, but too weak of will to break the net in which they have become voluntarily imprisoned.

There never was a Christian save One, and He was crucified.

Had any one dared to say this truth to me then, I should have bade him go and preach nonsense to children,—but now,—when I recall those white leaves of days that were unrolled before me fresh and blank with every sunrise, and with which I did nothing save scrawl my own Ego in a foul smudge across each one, I tremble, and inwardly pray that I may never be forced to send back my self-written record!