I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

Reading [poetry], you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once - hit, roused, scraped, bared, swung through the air, so that life seems to flash by; then again blinded, knocked on the head - all of which are agreeable sensations for a reader (since nothing is more dismal than to open the door and get no response).

When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

Disastrous would have been the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

What is a woman? I assure you, I do not know ... I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.