True dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with their own great themes.

Not that I had any special reason for hating school. Strange as it may seem to my readers, I was not unpopular there. I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.