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.

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

If it is not nailed to the floor, it's mine. If I can pry it loose, it is not nailed down.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile.

Don't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.

One should never make one's entrance with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.