“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!