Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

You can never know enough about your characters

From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington