For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.