The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.