An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

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

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.