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.

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

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.

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

I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.

Things are always different from what they might be.