Guests can be, and often are, delightful, but they should never be allowed to get the upper hand.

Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.

if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is next to impossible to unbore him.

Love isn't decent. Love is glorious and shameless.

It is beautiful, beautiful to give; one of the very most beautiful things in life.

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.