The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.

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.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.