Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention.

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.

Some persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.

A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.

It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it.

This is the true joy of life-the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown to the scrap-heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances.