I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

The only way to atone for being occasionally overdressed is to be massively overeducated.

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it