I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.

The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.