...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.

By experience", says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by a long wandering." Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then?

The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.

My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.

you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.

Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.