One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

Veni vidi veni iterum! (I came, I saw, I came again!)

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.