Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.