The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail 'round the high-pooped galleys... Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.