In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.

I believe I know the only cure, which is to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity—to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.

I was a failure in Boston...because they thought I was too fashionable to be intelligent, and a failure in New York because they were afraid I was too intelligent to be fashionable.

We ought to be opening a bottle of wine!

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.

I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown out of me like wings.