Perhaps if we lived with less physical beauty we would develop our true natures more.

Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right."

It's a nervous work. The state that you need to write is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of.

Do you ever notice," asked Luisa, "how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic . . . while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?"

[C]hronological prestige is tenacious: once attained, it can't be shed; it increased moment by moment, day by day, pressing its honours on you until you are lavishly, overly endowed with them. Until you literally sink under them.