The great events of the world take place in the brain.

It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Everything that is popular is wrong.

To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

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

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.