Terror of being found out is not always a preservative, it sometimes hurries on the act which it ought to prevent.

Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.

... up to this date, I have never been shut up in a separate room, or hedged off with any observances. My study, all the study I have attained to, is the little 2nd drawing room where all the (feminine) life of the house goes on; and I don't think I have ever had two hours undisturbed (except at night, when everybody is in bed) during my whole literary life.

As for pictures and museums, that don't trouble me. The worst of going abroad is that you've always got to look at things of that sort. To have to do it at home would be beyond a joke.

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.

It is often easier to justify one's self to others than to respond to the secret doubts that arise in one's own bosom.

every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.