The adventure was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to forget.
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
One of the odd things about Stendhal is that though he was always on the watch lest anyone made a fool of him, he was constantly making a fool of himself.
Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother – well, it s...
Mrs. Strickland had the gift of sympathy. It is a charming faculty, but one often abused by those who are conscious of its possession, for there is something ghoulish in the avidity with which they wi...
Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
Just as the embryo recapitulates in brief the evolution of the species, so did Suzanne recapitulate all the styles of her lovers.
I’m clever, I know it, and why shouldn’t I acknowledge it?’ While
Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.
It was not for me to leave the world and retire to a cloister, but to live in the world and love the objects of the world, not indeed for themselves, but for the Infinite that is in them.
It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen, and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and,...
It was as though the house had been left empty but a minute before and yet that minute was fraught with eternity so that you could not imagine that ever again that house would echo with talk and resou...
It made me sad to think how silly, useless, and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes, and counts....
It irks me that I cannot hope with any words of mine to give an idea of the pleasantness of his voice that invested even his most casual utterances with persuasiveness, or of the constant change in hi...
In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
I wish to deal only with the masterpieces which the consensus of opinion for a long time has accepted as supreme. We are all supposed to have read them; it is a pity that so few of us have.
I watched Edward Driffield. He was talking to Lady Hodmarsh. She was apparently telling him how to write a novel and giving him a list of a few that he really ought to read.
I was examined yesterday,' he remarked at last. 'It was worth while undergoing the gêne of it to know that one was perfectly fit.'Philip noticed that he still used a French word in an affected way whe...
I think I can tell you. I’ve always felt that there was something pathetic in the founders of religion who made it a condition of salvation that you should believe in them. It’s as though they needed...
I should have known that I wasn't meant for happiness and a life of ease. I have other work to do in the world.