A ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.

No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.