There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join

It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.