Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.
The secret of life is in art.
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
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.