To your generation, I must represent the literary equivalent of tufted furniture and gas chandeliers.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.

The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.

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

As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch.

Almost everybody in the neighborhood had troubles, frankly localized and specified; but only the chosen had complications. To have them was in itself a distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death warrant. People struggled on for years wit