In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys.

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.