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

It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

There are people whose society I find delicious; but when I sit alone and think of them I shudder.

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

Give me a bed and a book and I am happy.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?

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