there are some people who never learn; indeed, few people learn by experience, so far as I have ever seen.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case.

... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

To have a man who can flirt is next thing to indispensable to a leader of society.

A hotel is a hotel all the world over, a place essentially vulgar, commonplace, venal, the travesty of a human home.

It is so seldom in this world that things come just when they are wanted.