All Southern women wished of their menfolk was simply to be 'like Paris handsome and like Hector brave'.

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

After all, the supreme virtue in all art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives art a right to be.

The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning people are usually discreet and often kind, for we usually bleed a little before we begin to discern.

Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!