To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.