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.

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

Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.