Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.

God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.

But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.

So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape.

The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.