Love is feared: it dissolves society, it's unpopular, and it's very rare.

The City is a machine miraculously organised for extracting gold from the seas, airs, clouds, from barren lands, holds of ships, mines, plantations, cottage hearth-stones, trees and rocks; and he, wretchedly waiting in the exterior halls, could not even get his finger on one tiny, tiny lever.

Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the awful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style.

The Chinese are a knowing people; and I daresay that is why they once made a religious odor about old age; to prevent their sons from seeing their own future.

It's fine to be a great democrat when you've a slave to rub your boots on.

About myself - no. I'm unimportant, an observer, a wandering animal.

Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.