Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.
There are few things easier than to live badly and die well.
The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.
An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.
I don’t want to earn a living. I want to live.
I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.
If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture...
What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
Anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination.
The only form of lying that is absolutely beyond reproach is lying for its own sake.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.
An egg is always an adventure; the next one may be different.
Thinking is wonderful, but the experience is even more wonderful.
I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.
Beauty is a form of genius – is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.