Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.

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.

Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.