“I've read it. I have neither the time nor the inclination to correct or revise it.”

Original: Прочел, ни поправлять, ни выправлять ни времени, ни охоты нет. — A characteristically dry refusal to spend time polishing someone else's account of his life. · Reply to M. E. Lobanov about a biography, recalled in contemporaries’ memoirs (Russian)

• Humour
• Privacy
• Writing

“He that desires to live well, should strive to live obscurely.”

Advocating for the quiet peace of a private life far from public scrutiny · Essay, Of Obscurity

• Life
• Peace
• Privacy

“I cut the Phi Beta Kappa and the Alumni meetings this year.”

A practical example of his withdrawal from ceremonial obligations · Letter, The Victim of Correspondents

• Independence
• Privacy
• Rest

“I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & prophecy & speak Parables unobserv'd.”

Privacy is prized as the condition of prophetic work · Letter to Thomas Butts, 25 April 1803

• Imagination
• Privacy
• Vision

“I am what my friends the autograph-hunters call a “noted person,” sometimes perhaps “notorious,” but I am not quite sure of this.”

A self-mocking response to celebrity and the demands of admirers · Letter to M. A. De Wolfe Howe Jr, September 22, 1887

• Fame
• Humour
• Privacy

“Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.”

Comparing the privacy required for fishing with that required for intimate communication · Article, Trout Fishing in Europe, 1923

• Communication
• Humour
• Privacy

“I do not know what unfortunate obsession drove me at that time to bare my soul before the public's consideration, or disregard, which was more likely.”

Original: No sé qué infausta monomanía me acuciaba en aquella época a desnudar mi alma ante la pública consideración o desconsideración, que era más probable. — Looking back ruefully on the exposure of private experience in his earlier writing · Academy address, Semi-poesía y posibilidad, 1938 (Spanish)

• Memory
• Privacy
• Writing

“Think what a horrid piece of work the biographers make of a man’s private history.”

Expressing his distrust of biographers invading the privacy of their subjects · Remark on biography

• Biography
• Criticism
• Privacy

“I cannot write even a careless note like this without grave consideration.”

Showing how public attention can make even private writing feel consequential · Letter to M. A. De Wolfe Howe Jr, September 22, 1887

• Fame
• Privacy
• Writing

“I have only acknowledged the authorship to a single other person, except at your bidding.”

Further evidence of the extraordinary secrecy she maintained around her writing · Letter concerning the authorship of The Land o' the Leal

• Identity
• Privacy
• Writing

“I should like to see any man’s biography with corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don’t know each other’s secrets quite so well as we flatter ourselves we do.”

A witty warning about the inevitable limitations of biographical portraiture · Remark on biography

• Biography
• Privacy
• Truth

“To avoid the bitterness of being understood — and to avoid the bitterness of understanding; sometimes it is that.”

A cool admission that concealment can protect both speaker and listener · Essay, Symbols in Literature, Collected Prose

• Privacy
• Secrecy
• Understanding

“I have got tired of appearing on public occasions.”

A frank statement of his growing preference for private life over public appearances · Letter, The Victim of Correspondents

• Independence
• Privacy
• Solitude

“We care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster, and make as much noise and bustle as we can; but if the kindest and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and covert.”

We hide our tenderness, not our anger · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

• Anger
• Privacy
• Tenderness

“I have to be careful what I write, as I often find it in print, sometimes to my great discomfiture.”

Reflecting on the loss of privacy that accompanies literary fame · Letter to M. A. De Wolfe Howe Jr, September 22, 1887

• Fame
• Privacy
• Writing

“Your private grief is sacred, and I almost hesitate to send this note.”

A sensitive acknowledgement of the privacy and dignity owed to personal grief · Letter to Julia C. R. Dorr, December 8, 1884

• Grief
• Privacy
• Respect

“The Interviewer comes everywhere, and if a note happens to lie open anywhere he will know what is in it.”

A humorous anticipation of the modern problem of intrusive journalism · Letter to M. A. De Wolfe Howe Jr, September 22, 1887

• Fame
• Journalism
• Privacy

“The initials, 'H.D.,' had no identity attached; they could have been pure spirit. But with this I'm embodied.”

Reflecting on the freedom and mystery afforded by her literary initials · Autobiographical essay, H.D. by Delia Alton

• Identity
• Privacy
• Writing

“I have got enough of it.”

A bluntly humorous declaration of exhaustion with public appearances · Letter, The Victim of Correspondents

• Humour
• Privacy
• Rest

“Its work is done, as we would desire it to be done in our own cases, in silence and discretion.”

Praising charitable help that preserves the dignity and privacy of recipients. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

• Charity
• Dignity
• Privacy

“To betray publicly the private life and constrained ideal of that inward self for a reward's sake would be a poor collapse.”

Refusing money and fame if they cost Fiona's isolation · Letter to Alexander Hood

• Integrity
• Privacy
• Sacrifice

“I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print.”

A modest glimpse of her reluctance to place herself personally before the reading public. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

• Humility
• Privacy
• Writing

“Whether they relish the situation or not, Negroes should be concerned with making good impressions. They cannot do this by throwing wide every door of the racial entourage, to the wholesale gaze of the world at large. Decency demands that some things be kept secret; diplomacy demands it.”

Argues for privacy and tact as part of racial self-presentation in art · The Dark Tower column, Opportunity

• Dignity
• Privacy
• Race

“I could scarcely accuse myself of a personal intrusion.”

Her wry justification for writing personally about the origins of her most famous work. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

• Humility
• Privacy
• Writing