It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic - a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.

An idea that isn't risky is hardly worth calling an idea.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.