Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.