The gymnasiacs of Venice, in California, are so addicted to these practices that there has arisen a nation of men who can no longer put their arms against their sides.
All this cut-price transcendentalism does not prevent California from being a startlingly physical state. This becomes most obvious where Los Angeles saunters down to the sea. The region is called Venice.
As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.
One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.
You should make no effort to try to join society, stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to come to you.
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.
I recommend limiting one’s involvement in other people’s lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.
What better proof of love can there be than money? A ten-shilling note shows incontrovertibly just how mad about you a man is.
The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once.
It’s been agony but I couldn’t have done it any other way.
A gentleman doesn’t pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.
To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
The English think that incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn t?
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by witnessing the shameless gratification of an appetite they do not share.
If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast.
Never get involved with someone who wants to change you.