What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?

The word snob belongs to the sour-grape vocabulary.

People have a right to be shocked; the mention of unmentionable things is a kind of participation in them.

Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

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

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.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.