In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.

The real, native South Seas food is lousy. You can't eat it.

Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth, truths are found only in the depths of thought.

The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination.

The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.