Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.

George Moore leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

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. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.