Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.