"Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

"Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years."

"Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone."

"There are two critical points in every aerial flight-its beginning and its end."

"The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea."

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us."

"Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions"

"The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter."

"Grand telegraphic discovery today … Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time ... With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish … the “timbre” of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli."

"I have had the feeling that a properly constructed flying-machine should be capable of being flown as a kite; and conversely, that a properly constructed kite should be capable of use as a flying-machine when driven by its own propellers."

"Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there."

"There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition."

"I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace."

"We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue."

"Deep experience is never peaceful."

"The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?"

"I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them."

"To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him."

"Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women."

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

"Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life."

"Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet."

"In museums and palaces we are alternate radicals and conservatives."

"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have."

"A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals."

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."

"I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect."

"One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left."

"People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid."

"The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman."

"I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme."

"Life is a predicament which precedes death."

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."

"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue."

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out -- you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

Sorrow comes in great waves ... but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

Summer afternoon--summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art ... what we are talking about -- and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth -- I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

She had always been fond of history, and here [in Rome] was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.

She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.

London doesn't love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.