Never invite to dinner: those who won't decide until the last minute; those who come more than half an hour late; those who want to bring along two or three friends; drunks; monologists; those who stay until three o'clock in the morning; those who think that conversation means having an argument; those who take a high moral tone; those who are stupid, ugly, or dull. Enforcement of these rules will enable one to eat alone every night in comfort.

The present necessarily betrays the past.

Good advice is never as helpful as an interest-free loan.

Nature knows no difference between weeds and flowers.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.

Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden.