Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.

I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.