Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed only two dramatic features - the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.

He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.'