Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling.

You can have your cake and eat it. But my God, it will go rotten inside you.

Freedom is a very great reality, but it means above all things, freedom from lies.

Art- speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day and that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. The truth lives from day to day, and the marvelous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

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.

Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the "purpose" be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration.