It's an odd thing about this universe that, though we all disagree with each other, we are all of us always in the right.

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn't a God.

Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches.

Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of drops, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another below it.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?