It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

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

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame.