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

What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.

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

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

What is one's personality, detached from that of the friends with whom fate happens to have linked one? I cannot think of myself apart from the influence of the two or three greatest friendships of my life, and any account of my own growth must be that of their stimulating and enlightening influence.

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