Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.

Remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.

Good writers are of necessity rare.

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols.

Metaphysical ghosts cannot be killed, because they cannot be touched; but they may be dispelled by dispelling the twilight in which shadows and solidities are easily confounded. The Vital Principle is an entity of this ghostly kind; and although the daylight has dissipated it, and positive Biology is no longer vexed with its visitations, it nevertheless reappears in another shape in the shadowy region of mystery which surrounds biological and all other questions.

If you feel yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height of your argument.

As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.