Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.

I took Eugene Sue's Arthur from the reading-room. It's indescribable, enough to make you vomit. You have to read this to realize the pitifulness of money, success, and the public. Literature has become consumptive. It spits and slobbers, covers its blisters with salve and sticking-plaster, and has grown bald from too much hair-slicking. It would take Christ of art to cure this leper.

May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

I have no use for the kind of God who goes walking in his garden with a stick, sends his friends to live in the bellies of whales, gives up the ghost with a groan and then comes back to life three days later!

Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.