I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder.

A good friend will always stab you in the front.

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.