“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.”

“To go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes”

“Most people, who have quit smoking, have had at least one unsuccessful try in the past. It is not important how many times you try to quit. The only important thing is, that eventually you stay quit”

“Use almost can change the stamp of nature.”

“For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend.”

“I that please some, try all, both joy and terrorOf good and bad, that makes and unfolds error.”

“Do all men kill the things they do not love?”

“If the masses can love without knowing why, they also hate without much foundation.”

“Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!”

“Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.”

“The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order.”