Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.

The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.

I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.

The modern pantheist not only sees the god in everything, he takes photographs of it.

The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.

Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.

I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.