Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!

The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.

We Irish will never achieve anything; but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

The only way to even approach doing something perfectly is through experience, and experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.