“The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy ... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?”

“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.”

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

“There's no romance here but what you may have brought with you.”

“It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask . . . advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever.”

“But will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate to say so, because I always appreciate it.”

“Heaven deliver me from my friends!”

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

“It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousne...”