The dearest days in one's life are those that seem very far and very near at once. - Abraham Cahan

Your worst pessimist is, after all, an optimist with regard to himself.

Now, it is easy for me to separate the passages that were written from the heart, with conviction, from those which were written as propaganda, from a sense of duty. We used propaganda for an honest purpose, and there are still socialists who feel that this should be done.

Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness, I say to myself: "There are cases when success is a tragedy." There are moments when I regret my whole career, when my very success seems to be a mistake. I think that I was born for a life of intellectual interest. I was certainly brought up for one. The day when that accident turned my mind from college to business seems to be the most unfortunate day in my life. I think that I should be much happier as a scientist or writer, perhaps. I should then be in my natural element, and if I were doomed to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a stranger. That's the way I feel every time I pass the abandoned old building of the City College. The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains. Why, then, should I ascribe my triumph to special ability?