“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.”

“And too soon Marred are those so early Made.”

“And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,Contagious blastments are are most imminent.”

“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.”

“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.”

“Get thee to a nunnery.”

“They may seizeOn the white wonder of dear Juliet's handAnd steal immortal blessing from her lips,Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.”

“Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love”

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!”

“The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.”

“Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.”