Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.

the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

All excellence is equally difficult.