The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.

The Riviera isn't only a sunny place for shady people.

The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.

There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.

...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.