Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Abstinence

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Academia

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Acting and Actors

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Acting and Actors

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Acting and Actors

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Acting and Actors

Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Action

No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Action

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Advice

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

Ambition is the last refuge of failure.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ambition

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Anarchism

The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Anxiety

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Aphorisms and Epigrams

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Appearance

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Argument

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Argument

You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Aristocracy

In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

No great artist ever sees things as they really are, if he did he would cease to be an artist.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

All art is quite useless.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Attitude

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Attitude

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Autobiography

Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bachelor

By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bachelor

It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Beauty

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Beauty

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Beauty

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Beggars

The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Belief

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bills

Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Biography

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Blame

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Classics

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Reading

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Reading

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Business

The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Caprice

Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Careers

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Change

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Character

Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charity

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charm

It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charm

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Children

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Children

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Children

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cities and City Life

Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Civilization

Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Class

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Colleges and Universities

The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Colleges and Universities

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Color

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Color

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Common Sense

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Compliments

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Confession

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Confession

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Consistency

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Conspiracy

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Contradiction

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Conversation

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Conversation

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist -- the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cooking

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cries and Crying

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cynics and Cynicism

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Daughters

Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

For he who lives more lives than one: More deaths than one must die.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

I am dying beyond my means.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Democracy

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Despair

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Desperation

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Despotism

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Despotism

Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dictators and Dictatorship

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Disciples

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Discontent

She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Disgrace

It is he who has broken the bond of marriage -- not I. I only break its bondage.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Divorce

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dreams

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dreams

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dress

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dullness

Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Duty

The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one as yet discovered.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Duty

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Education

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Education

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Emotions

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Enemies

Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Engagement

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ethics

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Evangelism

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Events

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Examinations

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Excellence

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Experience

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Experience

An ordinary man away from home giving advice.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Experts

Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Extravagance

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Faces

Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults -- Ah! there is the sting of life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Failure

I can believe anything provided it is incredible.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Faith

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Family

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Family

And now, I am dying beyond my means. [Sipping champagne on his deathbed]
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Famous Last Words

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fantasy

Woman's first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fashion

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fashion

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fashion

Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fashion

The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fathers

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fathers

None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Faults

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fiction

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fiction

People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect -- simply a confession of failures.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fidelity

What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fidelity

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Flirting

Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Flowers

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Food and Eating

Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Forgiveness

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Function

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Future

One should always play fair when one has the winning cards.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gambling

The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Generations

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Genius

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Genius

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Genius

I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Genius

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gentlemen

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Goals

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Goodness

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Goodness

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gossip

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gossip

Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses -- once!
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Guests

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Heartbreak

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about History and Historians

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about History and Historians

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hobos

I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hospitality

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Housework

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Human Nature

In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Human Rights

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Humankind

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Humankind

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Humankind

One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hunting

They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Husbands

The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Husbands

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hypocrisy

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hypocrisy

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hypocrisy

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ideals and Idealism

Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ignorance

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Illness

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Illusion

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Imagination

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Impossibility

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Inaction

My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Individuality

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Infidelity

Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Information

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Innocence

Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Intelligence and Intellectuals

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Intelligence and Intellectuals

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Interviews

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Invention and Inventor

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stock broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Investments

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Jealousy

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Journalism and Journalists

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Journalism and Journalists

Bad manners make a journalist.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Journalism and Journalists

A kiss may ruin a human life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Kisses and Kissing

I am not young enough to know everything.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Language

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Learning

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Leisure

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Liberty

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Lies and Lying

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Lies and Lying

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Literature

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.