Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.

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.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Veni vidi veni iterum! (I came, I saw, I came again!)

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

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

I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.