Life is so unlike theory.

A woman's life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man's life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.

When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

That girls should not marry for money we are all agreed. A lady who can sell herself for a title or an estate, for an income or aset of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer treats his sheep and oxen--makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.

A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.