I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

Never be a pioneer. It's the early Christian that gets the fattest lion.

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Life is full of its disappointments, and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions.

Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.