There are hosts of French novels which I would rather not see a woman touch with the tips of her fingers; but there are others, which take one into a bigger world than we English people with our parochial ways of writing and seeing have any notion of.

George Sand carries you full into the mid-European stream--you feel it flowing, you are brought into contact with all the great ideas, all the big interests; she is an education in herself.

And then Balzac! he has such a range and breadth, he teaches one so much of human nature, and with such conscience, such force of representation! It's the same with their novels as with their theatre.

Whatever other faults he may have, a first-rate Frenchman of the artistic sort takes more pains over his work than anybody else in the world.

They don't shirk, they throw their life-blood into it, whether it's acting, or painting, or writing.