The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

Let me be dressed as I will, yet flies worms and flowers exceed me still.

The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.

The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.