The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

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

"More than him has done that," said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.

Oh, that's the beauty of the rose, that it blossoms and dies.

The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current.