“A writer should read until he is filled to the brim and like a pitcher which is over-filled over flows. And then he should write.”

“In another world,' he said, lowering his voice; I remember... was it not in another world, in a life which was not in thrall to sleep and its phantoms?...”

“Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.”

“Scarcely has night arrived to undeceive, unfurling her wings of crepe (wings drained even of the glimmer just now dying in the tree-tops); scarcely has the last glint still dancing on the burnished metal heights of the tall towers ceased to fade, like a still glowing coal in a spent brazier, which whitens gradually beneath the ashes, and soon is indistinguishable from the abandoned hearth, than a fearful murmur rises amongst them, their teeth chatter with despair and rage, they hasten and scatter in their dread, finding witches everywhere, and ghosts. It is night... and Hell will gape once more.”

“Tel est le sort facheux de tout livre preté - souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gaté”

“Do not be alarmed if they look paler than the other maidens of Greece. They are scarcely of this Earth, and seem to be shaking off the sleep of a past life.”

“The winter will be long and bleak. Nature has a dismal aspect.”