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

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

True love is just like regular love, but with more truth.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.