I believe I once considerably scandalized her by declaring that clear soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience.

Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.

There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden.

It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.

The man is a common murderer. A common murderer, possible, but a very uncommon cook.

He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep.

Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.