Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters.

it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

a good oyster cannot please the palate as acutely as a bad one can revolt it, and a good oyster cannot make him who eats it live for ever though a bad one can make him dead for ever.

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.