“A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.”

“And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.”

“Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory.”

“My style might seem awkward, but I'm only trying to write down the things in the scene that I think the reader should know.”

“Every little thing is sent for something, and in that thing there should be happiness and the power to make happy. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus we should do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.”

“The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”