Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them." Mark Twain "...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

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

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

We ought to be opening a bottle of wine!

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

[I]t's safer to be fond of dangerous people.