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.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

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.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

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.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.