In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests … - Anthony Trollope

How am I to tell you what he said? He talked nonsense about my beauty, as all the men do. If a woman were hump-backed, and had only one eye, they wouldn’t be ashamed to tell her she was a Venus.

Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?

She had seen no one who had so touched her. But she was alive to the romance of the thing, and was in love with the idea of being in love.