Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.

How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil? A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!

There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.