There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property.

As a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement.

The last thing a woman will consent to in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.