Life is a great disappointment.

The good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties.

Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life