The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.

Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

Oh, I don’t care about Jack. I don’t care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won’t you? You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. For the last three months?

Marriage is hardly a thing one can do now and then, except in America.

As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.