America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

There is a fatality about good resolutions – that they are always made too late

Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.