for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

Nothing is more consuming, or more illogical, than the desire for remembrance.

Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing.

Evidently, whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation of spirit.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

A doctrine of endurance flows easily from our lips when we are enduring jam and our neighbors dry bread, and it is still possible for us to become resigned to the afflictions of our brother.

It is difficult to deal successfully, he decided, with a woman whose feelings cannot be hurt.