Good works may only be beautiful sins, if they are not done in a true spirit.

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

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.

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

Imagination is the first faculty wanting in those that do harm to their kind.

Truly there is nothing in the world so blessed or so sweet as the heritage of children.

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