One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.