The ladies who try to keep their beauty are the ladies who lose it.

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

It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.

Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.

To become young again would seem to me an appalling prospect. Youth is a kind of delirium, which can be cured, if it is ever cured at all, by years of painful treatment.

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?

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.