The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
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.
When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.
Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last. From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
Why did you look at the sunset?’Philip answered with his mouth full:Because I was happy.
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
I’ve been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space?
What d’you suppose I care if I’m a gentleman or not? If I were a gentleman I shouldn’t waste my time with a vulgar slut like you.
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul.
Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn’t time to bother about anything but the average.
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.
I don’t think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I’m sure it’s very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
She says it’s really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
Because women can do nothing except love, they’ve given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it’s the whole of life. It’s an insignificant part.
Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does.
I’ve got no mother, no wife, no kids. I had, but my mother’s dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble. Women are bitches. It’s hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life.
She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. “You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!
The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one.
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
The ideal has many names and beauty is but one of them.
I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless …
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it.
The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.
He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord.
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults.
He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure
It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it.
It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.’‘Neither do I.’‘Then how can you believe anything at all?’‘I don’t know.
Did you really cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?
Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming an universal rule of action for all men.
…her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason…
Philip looked at his own work. How could you tell whether there was anything in it or whether you were wasting your time? It was clear that the will to achieve could not help you and confidence in yourself meantnothing.
Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven’t any money.
Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
I’m one of the few persons I ever met who are able to learn from experience.
…some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not.
He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.
The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, seemed capable of any adventure.
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
Milk is very nice, especially with a drop of brandy in it, but the domestic cow is only too glad to be rid of it. A swollen udder is very uncomfortable
I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination.
The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.
I only wanted to suggest to you that self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling.
It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.
To me he seemed one of those persons destined to failure of whom you wonder what purpose it can ever serve that they should have ben born.
A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick.
Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and a perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter…
I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency.
There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.
Dying is a dull, dreary affair. my advice is that you have nothing whatever to with it.
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.
I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.”Waddington, smiling, translated the question.“She says I’m good.”“As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.
I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
Himself an ugly man, insignificantof appearance, he prized very highly comeliness in others.
Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.
She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
I have great affection for you, Roy” I answered, “but I don’t think you are the sort of person I’d care to have breakfast with.
A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
Beauty is an ecstacy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it.
Something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.
To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.
Dinner a time when . . . one should eat wisely but not too well and talk well but not too wisely.
The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish but that they cease to love.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you for it was the illusion they loved.
Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
Money is like a sixth sense and you can’t make use of the other five without it.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them for the most part humble tolerant and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit out of it.
Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.
The world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.