Give children beauty, not the record of bloody slaughters and barbarous brawls, as they call history, or of the latitude and longitude of places nobody cares to visit, as they call geography.

A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.

George Moore leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

I have nothing to declare but my genius, and this four-kilo bag of cocaine.