It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.
I can believe anything provided it is incredible.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
When you really want love you will find it waiting for you.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Oh! I don’t think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.
Man is many things, but he is not rational.
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.