“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

“What a lark! What a plunge!”

“How lovely goodness is in those who, stepping lightly, go smiling through the world.”

“In marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in and day out in the same house.”

“The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”

“The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.”

“The cheekIs apter than the tongue to tell an errand.”

“I will be free, even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.”

“This we prescribe, though no physician; Deep malice makes too deep incision; Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed; Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.”

“Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care.”

“If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud you again.”

“He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache”

“I am not prone to weeping as our sex commonly are; the want of which vain dew perchance shall dry your pities;but I have that honorable grief lodged here which burns worse than tears drown.”

“There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently”

“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”

“You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'.”

“Then outwardly you are the small universe! Then inwardly you are the great universe.”