Literature always anticipates life. It doesn’t copy it but moulds it to it’s purpose.
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
I know. In fact, I am never wrong.
It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.
I don’t like compliments, and I don’t see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn’t mean.
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.
It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.