“The great have no friends, dear Blasco. It is the price they must pay for their greatness.”

“It speaks very well for human nature that with the masses of dear friends we have it’s only to-day that one of them broke the news to us.”

“He died last year. He had endured that life for six years. He was found one morning on the mountainside lying quite peacefully as though he had died in his sleep. From where he lay he had been able to see those two great rocks called the Faraglioni which stand out of the sea. It was full moon and he must have gone to see them by moonlight. Perhaps he died of the beauty of that sight.”

“With old and young great sorrow is followed by a sleepless night, and with the old great joy is as disturbing; but you, I suppose, finds happiness more natural and its rest is not disturbed by it.”

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”

“If I have succeeded at all in giving the complicated impression that Strickland made on me, it will not seem outrageous to say that I felt he was at once too great and too small for love.”

“The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.”