The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.