Nature I believe in. True art aims to, represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal--partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me.

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.

A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.

It is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.

Coleridge cried; "O God, how glorious it is to live!" Renan asks, "O God, when will it be worth while to live?" In Nature we echo the poet; in the world we echo the thinker.

age is nothing but death that is conscious.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.