The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.