What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?

I like to walk down Bond Street, thinking of all the things I don't desire.

People have a right to be shocked; the mention of unmentionable things is a kind of participation in them.

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

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

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.

All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.