Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.