One of the proud joys of the man of letters - if that man of letters is an artist - is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world's memory.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Man is a mind betrayed, not served, by his organs.

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.