A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.

An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.

They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.