She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.” Waddington, smiling, translated the question. “She says I’m good.” “As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.

Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

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

Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.