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.

Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

All intimacies are based on differences.

The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.