Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.

Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.

So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by life, and whether this is living.

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.