“A novel must show how the world truly is. Somehow, reveals the true source of our actions.”

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Let us have the luxury of silence.

I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.

My heart is, and always will be, yours.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

But for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

Every moment had its pleasure and its hope.

A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its own amusement.

It is very unfair to judge any body’s conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation.

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

With women, the heart argues, not the mind.

What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh.

I think if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And worth thinking about it as well.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.

Honour is purchas’d by the deeds we do.

I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.

When our thoughts – which bring actions – are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.

For evil deeds may better than bad words be borne.

The hands of the guilty don’t necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.

I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.