To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

Man is a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex, multiform creature that bears within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.