Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.

Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.

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

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden." "But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!" "I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing." "That may be, but the muffins are the same!