On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.
To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.
I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.
Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.
I can’t stand people that do not take food seriously.
It is personalities not principles that move the age.
The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
There is only one real tragedy in a woman’s life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by one’s conversation.
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.
The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
Don’t give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can’t wear in the evening.
Men become old, but they never become good.
Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.
I prefer women with a past. They’re always so damned amusing to talk to.
They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.