I do dislike people with Moral Aims. Everyone asks me why I learn Arabic, and when I say I just like it, they looked shocked and incredulous.

The Persian's mind, like his illuminated manuscripts, does not deal in perspective: two thousand years, if he happens to know anything about them, are as exciting as the day before yesterday.

Things good in themselves ... perfectly valid in the integrity of their origins, become fetters if they cannot alter.

advertisement ... has brought our disregard for truth into the open without even a figleaf to cover it.

There is generosity in giving, but gentleness in receiving.

not wholly consciously, but not quite unconsciously, as far as I can remember, I determined to fashion my future as a sculptor his marble, and there was in it the same mixture of foresight and the unknown. The thing in the mind of the artist takes its way and imposes its form as it wakens under his hand. And so with life.

The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.