Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.

A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.

Life without illusion is a ghostly affair.

I like going from one lighted room to another, such is my brain to me; lighted rooms.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.