Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.

Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system.

A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid, nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class, - too much money, and too few ideas.

my credo is very short. Its first article is art - and its second is art - and its third is art!

I loved nearly all my teachers; but it was not till I went home to live at Oxford, in 1867, that I awoke intellectually to a hundred interests and influences that begin much earlier nowadays to affect any clever child.

Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market.

In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.