For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay.

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too

Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.

Sherry, the civilized drink.

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage