Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along

At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.

Of course, it must be a wonderful building. But how like a barn! And how cold! Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Was this the reception his action would get from the whole world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.