I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.