“Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.”

“Clumsy? Why, I’ve had more women than you, you whelp. Well. Maybe not more than you, but certainly more than Ewan. (Lochlan)That’s not saying much. My left boot has had more women than Ewan. (Braden)”

“A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character…”

“Because sometimes the memory of what one has read tempers the actual experience, and the experience itself becomes, more than something physical, the realization of the reading...”

“Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it.”

“If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life. As elsewhere, experience is the only guide here; but as no one man’s experience can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it.”