There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.

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

Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework.

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

A great many quite good plays could be performed with rhythmic howls in the place of dialogue and lose almost nothing by the change.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.