People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it