I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

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