[T]he sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter. - Alice Meynell

Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a cloud.

There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence.

The smoke of a cigarette, more sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its waves so multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence and impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering curls ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand—and that is not a Hindu hand, nor any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured the curve of the section of a sea-wave—its flow, relaxation, and fall; but this is a single moment, whereas the line of cigarette-smoke in a still room fluctuates in twenty delicate directions.