Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
I am not young enough to know everything.
All art is quite useless.
We all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.
Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.