Life's a mauvais quart d'heure.

I never resist large temptations.

I am horribly, or delightfully indolent, and really write very little.

So you are a rhymer! We all are when we are young.

The kitten is quite lovely. […] It seems pensive. Perhaps it is thinking of some dim rose-garden in Persia, and wondering why it is kept in this chill England.

Beauty of form produces not one effect alone, but many effects. […] The richer the work of art the more diverse are the true interpretations. […] I pity that book on which critics are agreed.

To learn how to write English prose I have studied the prose of France. I am charmed that you recognise it: that shows I have succeeded. I am also charmed that no one else does: that shows I have succeeded also.

Bother space and time! they spoil life by allowing such a thing as distance.

Criticism of contemporary work should always be anonymous.

How the finely woven veil of form reveals in all the arts! I can recognise a whole life in the choice of an adjective.

English people are stupid about introductions and it was not till after you had left that I realised who you were.

I console myself by trying now and then to put ‘The Universe’ into a sonnet.

Poetry should be like a crystal, it should make life more beautiful and less real.

I kept looking at the moon, and beseeching her to tell me a story. At last she did.

It is strange that the most violent republicans I know are all vegetarians: Brussels sprouts seem to make people bloodthirsty, and those who live on lentils and artichokes are always calling for the gore of the aristocracy, and for the severed heads of kings.

I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things.

For me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.