When elderly invalids meet with fellow-victims of their own ailments, then at last real conversation begins, and life is delicious.

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

The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought.

Youth is the time for adventures of the body, but age for the triumphs of the mind.

Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors, or to see themselves as others see them.

The word snob belongs to the sour-grape vocabulary.

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.