The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.