A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, - both grammatically and actually, - whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.
I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life.
…nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbor chooses.
No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.
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