The great mistake about Europe is taking the countries seriously and letting them quarrel and drop bombs on one another.

They [the English] have a special word, "civil," for what is elsewhere merely ordinary politeness.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.

The most immoral and disgraceful and dangerous thing that anybody can do in the arts is knowingly to feed back to the public its own ignorance and cheap tastes.

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.

Every work of art is a trick by which the artist manipulates appearances.