Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect.

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

I am for the ones who represent sense, and so was Jane Austen.

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.