What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

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

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.

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