Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are!
Magnitudes are algebraically represented by letter, men by men of letters, and so on.
Still, as Christmas-tide comes round, They remember it again – Echo still the joyful sound “Peace on earth, good-will to men!”
You can’t be that good; you work for me.
One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.
It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.
It’s too late to correct it: when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.
You shouldn’t make jokes if it makes you so unhappy.
When you have made a thorough and reasonably long effort, to understand a thing, and still feel puzzled by it, stop, you will only hurt yourself by going on.
I wish I dared dispense with all costume. Naked children are so perfectly pure and lovely; but Mrs. Grundy would be furious – it would never do.
I confess I do not admire naked boys. They always seem to me to need clothes, whereas one hardly sees why the lovely forms of girls should ever be covered up.
The recent extraordinary discovery in Photography, as applied in the operations of the mind, has reduced the art of novel-writing to the merest mechanical labour.
I have often seen a cat without a grin – but a grin without a cat – remember the cat kept appearing and disappearing slowly bit by bit.
My view of life is, that it’s next to impossible to convince anybody of anything.
That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running short – not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.
In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions, at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail – not the tail that wags the dog.
In proceeding to the dining-room, the gentleman gives one arm to the lady he escorts – it is unusual to offer both.
She tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.
As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleasantry is liable to be misunderstood – a circumstance at all times unpleasant.
There comes a pause, for human strength will not endure to dance without cessation; and everyone must reach the point at length of absolute prostration.