Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

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

Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.

You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...