A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

The first duty of a lecturer is to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.