Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.

... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.

No great thing happens suddenly.

It appears that even the different parts of the same person do not converse among themselves, do not succeed in learning from each other what are their desires and their intentions.

The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.

There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.

His smile bore the same relation to a real smile as false teeth do to real teeth.