Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful.

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write.

Every house is a mad-house at some time or another.

... caprice is as ruinous as routine.

Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins.