you may call a person vain, and they will smile; you may call them immoral, and they may even feel flattered - but call them narrow-minded and they have done with you.

while nearly every way of falling in love is kind, every way of getting out of love is cruel.

The right sort of gossip is a charming and stimulating thing. The Odyssey itself is simply glorious gossip, and the same may be said of nearly every tale of mingled fact and legend which has been handed down to us through the ages.

Though the worship of riches is an old religion, there has never been a danger that it might become the sole religion. And yet that is what is surely going to happen in the world.

... nothing, of course, is ever so strange as love to the one who is not a lover.

there is such a mistaken notion abroad in this country that the individual who makes sharp remarks must be sincere, while the one who says pleasant things must be more or less a humbug.

there is no doubt that the garrulous bore is the most maddening creature to be shut up with for any length of time, on the wide earth. ... As a matter of fact, I have sometimes wondered if these impulsive, perfectly meaningless murders of which one has read at times, can have come about through one party babbling on endlessly - just once too often - when the other longed to be left in peace.