n congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the
imitations of the best models, might grow into something really great
and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into
careless habits of accuracy or takes to frequenting the society of the
aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his
imagination.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts,
for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

As for believing things, I can believe anything provided that it is
quite incredible.

'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over
the portal of the new world 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the
message of Christ to man was simply: 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of
Christ.

London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always
recognise them, they look so thoroughly unhappy.

For those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but
the actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection.

The English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity
is talking to it.

Men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind,
to push it violently forward in this direction or in that. The mind
should be receptive, a harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to
be ruffled, not a bustling busybody for ever trotting about on the
pavement looking for a new bun shop.

There is nothing more beautiful than to forget, except, perhaps, to be
forgotten.

All bad art comes from returning to life and nature, and elevating them
into ideals. Life and nature may sometimes be used as part of art's
rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must
be translated into artistic conventions. The moment art surrenders its
imaginative medium it surrenders everything. As a method realism is a
complete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are
modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter.

Men may have women's minds just as women may have the minds of men.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce
the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs I
don't know.

How marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far
more expensive.

He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the
whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man nowadays.

Liter