Nowhere can it rain harder and with a more tiresome persistence than in California during the brief season when it rains at all.

... France is the genius among nations.

No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class.

The very commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery.

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

We never care to know new people unless we are sure we shall like them.