And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.
I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment’s notice.
You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices, there are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.
When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.
Before Turner there was no fog in London.
He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.
The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.
Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.
I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little often share.
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.
Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance – And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.