Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless." "Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them." "I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.

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

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

It is art, and art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.