The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

When I was young, I was no one. Now, I'm worldwilde.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.