The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.