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

This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.

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

All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.

Thank heavens, the sun has gone in and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.

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

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