Wolf's wool is the best of wool, / but it cannot be sheared because / the wolf will not comply.

[On her use of quotations:] When a thing has been said so well that it could not be said better, why paraphrase it? Hence my writing, is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber.

What is our innocence, What is our guilt? All are naked, none is safe.

The prey of fear, he, always curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly done, says to the alternating blaze, "Again the sun! anew each day; and new and new and new, that comes into and steadies my soul."

Superior people never make long visits.

If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.

Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.