I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more rare.

My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.

Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you?

What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.