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?

Don't laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

Only those who get into scrapes with their eyes open can find the safe way out.

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

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.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.

You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate