All our lives we are putting pennies — our most golden pennies — into penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.

If they lost the incredible conviction that they can change their wives or husbands, marriage would collapse at once.

How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!

The truth is that the phenomena of artistic production are still so obscure, so baffling, we are still so far from an accurate scientific and psychological knowledge of their genesis or meaning, that we are forced to accept them as empirical facts; and empirical and non-explanatory names are the names that suit them best.

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.

We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.