Chekhov will seek out the key situation in the life of a cabman or a charwoman, and make them glow for a brief moment in the tender light of his sympathy.

Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule.

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.

The lovers of beauty must unite in a league, and carry out some great propagandist work through the country. They must demand the extermination of the bulldog and the dismantling of the cheap villa, both of which are responsible for a deal of our contentment amid ugliness.

Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside.

This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

The mirror that Strindberg held up to Nature was a cracked one. It was cracked in a double sense -- it was crazy. It gave back broken images of a world which it made look like the chaos of a lunatic dream.