[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.

I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.