this world.

The happy people of the world have their value, but only the negative
value of foils. They throw up and emphasise the beauty and the
fascination of the unhappy.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one
wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst--the last
is a real tragedy.

Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been
made--through disobedience and rebellion.

It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes
life too full of terrors.

Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.

Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to
flirt till one is forty or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we
poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us
but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have
become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their
fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more ... becoming.

One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be
judged.

In a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from
each other.

It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is
fatal.

Secrets from other people's wives are a necessary luxury in modern life.
So, at least, I am told at the club by people who are bald enough to
know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She
invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things.
They discover everything except the obvious.

Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type
imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been
dreamed in fiction.

I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should
become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of
me.

To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is
like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

I am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I
really think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be
misunderstood.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man
is.

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