People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.

I've struck up a tremendous intimacy with Conte Alberto, and we literally can't live without each other. He is the first object my eyes greet in the morning, and the last at night.

My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous — or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity.

Keep making the movements of life.

The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.

Everything about Florence seems to be colored with a mild violet, like diluted wine.