While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.
It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.
In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.
I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o’clock.
Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.
Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.
Placerea este testul naturii, semnul ei aprobator.
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one center of pain.
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us.
There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.
I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.
There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.
Life would be dull without them.
Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of Autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.
Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life.
I have never learned anything except from people younger than myself.
There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.
To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.