"It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible."

"Now, everybody, I suppose, is aware that in recent years the silly business of divination by dreams has ceased to be a joke and has become a very serious science."

"Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery."

"If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress."

"Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The Evening News about ten months ago."

"It is all nonsense, to be sure; and so much the greater nonsense inasmuch as the true interpretation of many dreams - not by any means of all dreams - moves, it may be said, in the opposite direction to the method of psycho-analysis."

"For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced."