It is the starved imagination, not the well nourished, that is afraid.

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, "She loves young Emerson." A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?

She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.