“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.”

“Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts?”

“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”

“There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved, by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation.”

“What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.”

“Much rain wears the marble.”

“When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand.”

“This liberty is all that I request.”

“...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.”

“Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench; I love her ten times more than e'er I did: O, how I long to have some chat with her!”

“The soul of this man is his clothes.”

“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”

“If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not toalter me.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster”

“But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immured in the brain;But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices.”