There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

Be yourself; everyone else is taken.

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul."

There are few things easier than to live badly and die well.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.