... the fact that the idea don't come freshly on us makes it necessary for it to be better in order to be good at all. The first rose must have driven the first smeller perfectly wild, but every rose since has smelt just as well.

I am an incorrigible devotee to solitude, and am never so cheerful, I believe, or so unruffled by small difficulties as when I'm alone. There's a sort of obligation to be polite and pleasant to yourself when nobody else is round.

love all the people you can. The sufferings from love are not to be compared to the sorrows of loneliness.

I tried the plan of talking incessantly myself, so as to hide the fact I didn't hear anything they said, the result was nobody paid the slightest attention to my (doubtless brilliant) remarks.

Now, in this town, you have to putter over a thing, even the slightest, a month. The powers that evolved the cabbage apple-pie in the morning, and executed it in the evening, are here unknown quantities.

But I should like to take these things on full gallop, instead of dawdling along gaping at them. I get fearfully tired, and a very little Abbey goes a long way with me.

Just as I came out into the rue, an omnibus came by - pas complet, so I sprang in, without that prayer and fasting which should chasten the mind before risking it in a French omnibus.