Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.

All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake.

Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.