No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

It is better to be alone than unwelcome. - Eve

We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes

The partitions of the houses were so thin we could hear the women occupants of adjoining rooms changing their minds.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.