We have really no absent friends.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

She had one of those charming faces which, according to the angle from which you see them, look either melancholy or impertinent. Her eyes were grey; her trick of narrowing them made her seem to reflect, the greater part of the time, in the dusk of her second thoughts. With that mood, that touch of arriere pensee, went an uncertain, speaking set of lips.

Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.