London is on the whole the most possible form of life.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer...No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.

You think too much.' 'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.

All intimacies are based on differences.

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.