The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.

Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them and they are the haunt of toads.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world will let them.