She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.

I distrust Great Men... I believe in aristocracy, though... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet... They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.

. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.

Do you remember Italy?

This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.