The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter’d by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.
No matter through what realms of the fantastic you may travel, you arrive inevitably at the commonplace.
To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one’s life is another.
In France the men all live in cafes, the children are all put out to nurse, and the women, saving the respect of mademoiselle – well, the less said about them the better.
You have never seen ugliness in a happy face.
Every man’s first declaration of love is bathos – the zenith of his passion connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence.
It all depends whether hope is in front or behind you.
Beyond all the fires of love through which one passes there is the star of Duty, and happy the individual who can live in its serenity.
Men are men and women are women. We’ve tried for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and we’ve failed miserably.
The measure of my success is the measure of my happiness.
The only cure for loss of illusions is fresh illusions, more illusions, and always illusions.
I hold in my hands the very soul of a man. What more dare a woman ask of the high gods?
Have you ever considered what anxious thought, what consummate knowledge of human nature, what dearly-bought experiences go into the making of an advertisement?
Art is long, and the talk about it is even longer.
Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously. Compared with it, Death is but a shallow jest.
The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.
Women are women and can’t help themselves.
As I enter on the path of happiness, I scatter the dregs and shreds and clippings of the past behind me. I divest myself of all the crapulous years.
Our happiness is made up of the things we miss.
I believe half of the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.