The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt…

Everything about Florence seems to be coloured with a mild violet, like diluted wine.

I haven't a creature to talk to...How in Boston, when the evening arrives, and I am tired of reading, and know it would be better to do something else, can I go to the theater? I have tried it, ad nauseam. Likewise calling. Upon whom?"

In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.

There are few things more exciting to me, in short, than a psychological reason.

[of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones] [it is] like a vast episode in a sermon preached by a grandly humorous divine; and however we may be entertained by the way, we must not forget that our ultimate duty is to be instructed.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need …