In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.

I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.

All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.