The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine and the electric telegraph.

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.

My heart, my heart, be whole and free: Love is thine only enemy.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.