Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.

From beginning to end Wilde performed his life and continued to do so even after fame had taken the plot out of his own hands.

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they're glad to see you.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.