"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new." — William Makepeace Thackeray

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.