Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you’re a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.

Music, the knife without a hilt.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

What’s wrong? Has Francis been rude? Then you must try to overlook it. I know you wouldn’t think so, but he is thoroughly upset by Tom Erskine’s death; and when Francis is troubled he doesn’t show it, he just goes and makes life wretched for somebody.

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.