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

A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.

I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.

The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky.

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.

Youth, art, love, dreams, true-heartedness - why must they go out of the summer world into darkness?

Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.