My envy’s not dangerous; it wouldn’t hurt a mouse.

Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in...

It comes over me that I had then a strange alter ego deep down somewhere inside me, as the full-blown flower is in the small tight bud, and I just took the course, I just...

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we’ll wake up to find our work done because we’ve lain all night a-dreaming...

However, Nick acted as much as possible under the circumstances, and that was rectifying — it brought with it enjoyment and a working faith. He had not gone counter to the axiom that in a...

It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

It has made me better loving you… it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them....

There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

I might show it to you, but you’d never see it. The privilege isn’t given to every one; it’s not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You...

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

Night came on, the lamps were lighted, the tables near him found occupants, and Paris began to wear that peculiar evening look of hers which seems to say, in the flare of windows and theatre-doors,...

It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be...

I think I don’t regret a single ‘excess’ of my responsive youth – I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.

I know at least what I am,’ he simply went on; ‘the other side of the medal’s clear enough. I’ve not been edifying–I believe I’m thought in a hundred quarters to have been barely decent....

Do you know I love you ?- I’m sure I don’t care whether you do or not !

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives.

I’m yours for ever–for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock. If you’ll only trust me, how little you’ll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.

You were reserved for my future

It’s not my fate to give up–I know it can’t be.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush; the life of the town was itself under a spell–so unnaturally, up and down the whole prospect of...

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

She was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she...

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

I was too much taken up with another interest to care; I felt beneath my feet the threshold of the strange door, in my life, which had suddenly been thrown open and out of which...

Our relation, all round, exists–it’s a reality, and a very good one; we’re mixed up, so to speak, and it’s too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

Live all you can: it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?

Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it.

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them.

The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea; she dressed as if for dinner. The tea-table offered an anomalous and picturesque repast; and on leaving it they all sat and talked in the large...

The image of the “presence,” whatever it was, waiting there for him to go–this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty...

He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere those Mrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, so that she shouldn’t notice: he liked–oh this he did like, and above all in the...

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.

I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.

The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one...

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you’re nice to the...

Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.

If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times.

Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.

Nothing is my last word on anything.

Though I couldn’t make out what she was talking of I was terribly frightened; the absence of a clue gave such a range to one’s imagination.(“Sir Edmund Orme”)