1. “But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?”
2. ”Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”
3. ”Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”
4. "If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul."
5. “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
6. “How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!”
7. "If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul. "
8. “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
9. “Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches.”
10. “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
11. “There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.”
12. ”This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.”
13. “What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”
14. “What a bore it is, waking up in the morning always the same person. I wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big, bushy eyebrows and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist. I should like to be refined and melancholy, the victim of a hopeless passion; to love in the old, stilted way, with impossible Adoration and Despair under the pale-faced Moon. I wish I could get up; I wish I were the world's greatest Violinist. I wish I had lots of silver, and first Editions, and green ivory.”
15. ”What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.”
