Cecilia had moreover a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch … - Henry James

..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.

It's not my fate to give up — I know it can't be.

The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we are bound to like it or find it interesting: in case we do not our course is perfectly simple — to let it alone. We may believe that of a certain idea even the most sincere novelist can make nothing at all, and the event may perfectly justify our belief; but the failure will have been a failure to execute, and it is in the execution that the fatal weakness is recorded. If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions, and some of the most interesting experiments of which it is capable are hidden in the bosom of common things.