Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.

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.

whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

His smile bore the same relation to a real smile as false teeth do to real teeth.

The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.

If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.

What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience.