For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

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