Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man because he once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My concern springs usually from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did not want one.

To have suffered ... sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth and has to be learned in the fire.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.

To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.