The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.

To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

...The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.