Nothing of that kind ever amuses me to the end: before it 's half over it bores me to death; it makes me sick.

Hang it, why can't a poor fellow enjoy things in peace?
My illusions are all broken-winded; they won't carry me twenty paces! I can't laugh and forget; my laugh dies away before it begins.

Your friend Stendhal writes on his book-covers (I never got farther) that he has seen too early in life la beaute parfaite.

I don't know how early he saw it; I saw it before I was born--in another state of being! I can't describe it positively; I can only say I don't find it anywhere now.

Not at the bottom of champagne glasses; not, strange as it may seem, in that extra half-yard or so of shoulder that some women have their ball-dresses cut to expose.