Let me be dressed as I will, yet flies worms and flowers exceed me still.

The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.

Men as a rule love with their eyes, woman with their ears.