It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

In her abhorrrence of a vacuum, Nature, for the furtherance of her favorite hobby, has often to resort to strange devices. If she could but understand that vacuity is sometimes better than superfluity!

Cruelty, I truly believe, is the one and only sin.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.