As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding.

No one in this country has any root anywhere; we don't live in America, we board here, we are like spiders that run over the surface of the water.

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music.

How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world about them. People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. But magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And what is more, they find it everywhere.