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

I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.

And when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute love instead. Love, the poet has said, is a woman's whole existence.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?

All artists need a room of their own