You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.

One of my latest sensations was going to Lady Airlie's to hear Browning read his own poems - with the comport of finding that, at least, if you don't understand them, he himself apparently understands them even less. He read them as if he hated them and would like to bite them to pieces.

All the same don't forget that you're young — blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance.

It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (with a great originality of its own).