“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.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“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.”

“I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.”

“Retire me to my Milan, whereEvery third thought shall be my grave.”

“I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.”

“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.”

“He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“Dirty days hath SeptemberApril June and NovemberFrom January up to MayThe rain it raineth every dayAll the rest have thirty-oneWithout a blessed gleam of sunAnd if any of them had two-and-thirtyThey'd be just as wet and twice as dirty.""April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”

“The rain, it raineth every day.”

“I don't know. How hot is it supposed to be?”