I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

If the artist is necessarily sensitive, does that sensitiveness form in its essence a state constantly liable to shade off into the morbid? Does this liability, moreover, increase in proportion as the effort is great and the ambition intense?

Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.

To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn´e: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.