When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, thehistoric sense.

The only glory most of us have to hope for is the glory of being normal.

Frenchwomen could not dress like Englishwomen without conviction of sin.

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

The very notion of tabu is one of the rightest notions in the world. Better any old tabu than none, for a man cannot be said to be"on the side of the stars" at all, unless he makes refusals.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

I know exaggerators of both kinds: people whose lies are only picturesque adjectives, and people whose picturesque adjectives are only lies.