easier to draw the outline of a mountain than the changing
appearance of a face; and truth in human relations is of this
more intangible and dubious order: hard to seize, harder to
communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose, colloquial sense -
not to say that I have been in Malabar when as a matter of
fact I was never out of England, not to say that I have read
Cervantes in the original when as a matter of fact I know not
one syllable of Spanish - this, indeed, is easy and to the
same degree unimportant in itself. Lies of this sort,
according to circumstances, may or may not be important; in a
certain sense even they may or may not be false. The habitual
liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife
and friends; while another man who never told a formal
falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie - heart and
face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which
poisons intimacy. And, VICE VERSA, veracity to sentiment,
truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends,
never to feign or falsify emotion - that is the truth which
makes love possible and mankind happy.

L'ART DE BIEN DIRE is but a drawing-room accomplishment
unless it be pressed into the service of the truth. The
difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what
you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him
precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the
case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or
writing an explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the
world. But one thing you can never make Philistine natures
understand; one thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains
as unseizable to their wits as a high flight of metaphysics -