A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.