They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?"

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Let man be true and every god a liar.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.