I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose." said Isabel

It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.