Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate.

The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policemen can see them.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.

Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.