And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.

The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.