I often think when a man's once past a certain age, the older he grows the tougher he gets, and women the same or more so.

[Did you] ever know a sincere emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause?

To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind ... and leads later to the interpretation of experience; to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

But if it ever occurs to people to value the honor of the mind equally with the honor of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort — and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment.

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.

The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.