I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.

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

All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.

We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generosity.

One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.

The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.

The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.