When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

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.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.