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.

The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.

It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.

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.

The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.