A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.

God very seldom succeeds. He has very nearly everything against him, of course.

Publishers of course have you altogether in their grip; if they say you must do a thing you have jolly well got to do it.

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

Giving is not at all interesting; but receiving is, there is no doubt about it, delightful.

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career no further. If a man marries, on the other hand, public opinion is all against him if he takes this view.

Every year, in the deep midwinter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight. ... every shop is a choked mass of humanity ... nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purposes, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favor of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human creatures.