Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

you will always love, and you will always be loved

But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.