What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

An echo of music, a face in the street, the wafer of the new moon, a wanton thought - only in the iridescence of things the vagabond soul is happy.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?