There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the y...ears it gets to be long enough for you pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. It's another thing, though, to hold up that cloth for inspection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into... my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, ...and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out [...a] line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. Whe...n you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: "This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow." Be modest. An Englishman will say, "I have a little house in the country"; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, "Yes, I don't play too badly." If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, "I do a little sailing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...these little girls spoke of going to one school or the other later on, of perhaps they would decide not to practice their music... that day, or see if they could put off their dancing lesson till another hour. Things seemed to happen with them, sometimes one way, sometimes another, while with me there was a definite aim, and things just had to happen at a certain time. My one aim was to do a thing well, and to excel if possible. This outside life, where things seemed to go on without apparent necessity, held me in thrall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,... And do a willful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persu...aded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »