to have a capacity for a passion, and not to realise it is to make oneself incomplete and limited.

even in actual life egotism is not without its attractions. when people talk to us about others they are usually dull. when they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them up when they become wearisome as easily as one can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied they would be perfect absolutely.

every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is invariably judas who writes the biography.

art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. she is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. she is a veil rather than a mirror. she has flowers that no forest knows of, birds that no woodland possesses. she makes and unmakes many worlds, and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. hers are the 'forms more real than living man,' and hers the great archetypes, of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies. nature has, in her eyes, no laws, no uniformity. she can work miracles at her will, and when she calls monsters from the deep they come. she can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. at her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of june, and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the lydian hills. the dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them. she has hawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side.

in literature mere egotism is delightful.

if we live for aims we blunt our emotions. if we live for aims we live for one minute, for one day, for one year, instead of for every minute, every day, every year. the moods of one's life are life's beauties. to yield to all one's moods is to really live.

many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in 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.

literature always anticipates life. it does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

as long as a thing is useful or necessary to us or affects us in any way, either for pain or pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art.

i couldn't have a scene in this bonnet: it is far too fragile. a harsh word would ruin it.

music creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears.

nothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation.

i adore london dinner parties. the clever people never listen and the stupid people never talk.

learned conversation is either the affection of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

the academy is too large and too vulgar. whenever i have gone there, there have been either so many people that i have not been able to see the pictures—which was dreadful, or so many pictures that i have not been able to see the people—which was worse.

all art is quite useless.

beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration and destroys the harmony of any face. the moment one sits down to think one becomes all nose or all forehead or something horrid.

the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

secrecy seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. the commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

conceit is one of the greatest of the virtues, yet how few people recognise it as a thing to aim at and to strive after. in conceit many a man and woman has found salvation, yet the average person goes on all-fours grovelling after modesty.

it is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

humanity will always love rousseau for having confessed his sins not to a friend but to the world.

just as those who do not love plato more than truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of the academe, so those who do not love beauty more than truth never know the inmost shrine of art.

there is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction: the sort of fatality that seems to dog, through history, the faltering steps of kings. it is better not to be different from one's fellows.

to be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the french revolution.

vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

there must be a new hedonism that shall recreate life and save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. it must have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it must never accept any theory or system that will involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. its aim, indeed, is to be experience itself and not the fruits of experience, bitter or sweet as they may be. of the ?stheticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it is to know nothing. but it is to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.

art never expresses anything but itself. it has an independent life, just as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. it is not necessarily realistic in an age of realism nor spiritual in an age of faith. so far from being the creation of its time it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress.

people who mean well always do badly. they are like the ladies who wear clothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety. good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

when art is more varied nature will, no doubt, be more varied also.

if a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie he might just as well speak the truth at once.

the ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

nature is no great mother who has home us. she is our own creation. it is in our brain that she quickens to life. things are because we see them, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have influenced us. to look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

the proper school to learn art in is not life but art.

i won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. they matter a good deal. they matter far too much.

i wouldn't marry a man with a future before him for anything under the sun.

i am the only person in the world i should like to know thoroughly, but i don't see any chance of it just at present.

modern memoirs are generally written by people who have entirely lost their memories and have never done anything worth recording.

education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

women are like minors, they live upon their expectations.

twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies.

it is the very passions about whose origin we deceive ourselves that tyrannise most strongly over us. our weakest motives are those of whose nature we are conscious. it often happens that when we think we are experimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves.

whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motives.

i thought i had no heart. i find i have, and a heart doesn't suit me. somehow it doesn't go with modern dress. it makes one look old, and it spoils one's career at critical moments.

i don't play accurately—anyone can play accurately—but i play with wonderful expression. as far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my forte. i keep science for life.

i delight in men over seventy. they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.

everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching—that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.

nature hates mind.

from the point of view of form the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. from the point of view of feeling the actor's craft is the type.

where we differ from each other is purely in accidentals—in dress, manner, tone of voice, religious opinions, personal appearance, tricks of habit, and the like.

the more we study art the less we care for nature. what art really reveals to us is nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.... it is fortunate for us, however, that nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach nature her proper place. as for the infinite variety of nature, that is a pure myth. it is not to be found in nature herself. it resides in the imagination or fancy or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are usurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance. their chilling touch is over everything. they are vulgarising mankind.

ordinary people wait till life discloses to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life are revealed before the veil is drawn away. sometimes this is the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature which deals immediately with the passions and the intellect. but now and then a complex personality takes the place and assumes the office of art, is, indeed, in its way a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.

thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease.

a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. it is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied.

the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. he is the very basis of civilised society.

it is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows itself in the face. vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes of contour, but that is all. our faces are really masks given to us to conceal our minds with.

what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? a carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective.

the only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

people say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. that may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is.

it is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors.

nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

conscience and cowardice are really the same things. conscience is the trade name of the firm—that is all.

in every sphere of life form is the beginning of things. the rhythmic, harmonious gestures of dancing convey, plato tells us, both rhythm and harmony into the mind. forms are the food of faith, cried newman, in one of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and know the man. he was right, though he may not have known how terribly right he was. the creeds are believed not because they are rational but because they are repeated. yes; form is everything. it is the secret of life. find expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you. find expression for a joy and you intensify its ecstasy. do you wish to love? use love's litany and the words will create the yearning from which the world fancies that they spring. have you a grief that corrodes your heart? learn its utterance from prince hamlet and queen constance and you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation and that form, which is the birth of passion, is also the death of pain. and so, to return to the sphere of art, it is form that creates not merely the critical temperament but also the ?sthetic instinct that reveals to one all things under the condition of beauty. start with the worship of form and there is no secret in art that will not be revealed to you.

it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

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.

lady henry wotton was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. she was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. she tried to look picturesque but only succeeded in being untidy.

those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

with an evening coat and a white tie anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilised.

there is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad one has been. it is intellectually fascinating. one of the greatest pleasures of having been wicked is that one has so much to say to the good.

laws are made in order that people in authority may not remember them, just as marriages are made in order that the divorce court may not play about idly.

to get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair. they are so sentimental.

the reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. the basis of optimism is sheer terror. we think that we are generous because we credit our neighbours with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the high-wayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. i have the greatest contempt for optimism.

art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative and pleasureable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. this is the first stage. then life becomes fascinated with this new wonder, and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle. art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it and refashions it in fresh form; is absolutely indifferent to facts; invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment. the third stage is when life gets the upper hand and drives art out into the wilderness. this is the true decadence, and it is from this that we are now suffering.

good intentions have been the ruin of the world. the only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.

i never take any notice of what common people say, and i never interfere with what charming people do.

you know i am not a champion of marriage. the real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish, and unselfish people are colourless—they lack individuality. still there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. they retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. they are forced to have more than one life. they become more highly organised, and to be highly organised is, i should fancy, the object of man's existence. besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage it is certainly an experience.

those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

i never talk during music—at least not during good music. if anyone hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.

when critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

faith is the most plural thing i know. we are all supposed to believe in the same thing in different ways. it is like eating out of the same dish with different coloured spoons.

experience is of no ethical value. it is merely the name men give to their mistakes. moralists have, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, have claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, have praised it as something that teaches us what to follow and shows us what to avoid. but there is no motive power in experience. it is as little of an active cause as conscience itself. all that it really demonstrates is that our future will be the same as our past and that the sin we have done once, and with loathing, we shall do many times, and with joy.

sensations are the details that build up the stories of our lives.

no artist has ethical sympathies. an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

she looks like an 'edition de luxe' of a wicked french novel meant specially for the english market.

i never knew what terror was before; i know it now. it is as if a hand of ice were laid upon one's heart. it is as if one's heart were beating itself to death in some empty hollow.

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.

no artist desires to prove anything. even things that are true can be proved.

one knows so well the popular idea of health. the english country gentleman galloping along after a fox—the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.

people seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. we ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.

soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they are! there is animalism in the soul, and the body has its moments of spirituality. the senses can refine and the intellect can degrade. who can say where the fleshly impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins? how shallow are the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! and yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! is the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? or is the body really in the soul, as giordano bruno thought? the separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, and the unison of spirit with matter is a mystery also.

those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. for these there is hope.

there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. books are well written or badly written-that is all.

marriage is a sort of forcing house. it brings strange sins to fruit, and sometimes strange renunciations.

the moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

a sense of duty is like some horrible disease. it destroys the tissues of the mind, as certain complaints destroy the tissues of the body. the catechism has a great deal to answer for.

they are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. this is a fault.

few people have sufficient strength to resist the preposterous claims of orthodoxy.

she wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. that is always a sign of despair in a woman.

a virtue is like a city set upon a hill—it cannot be hid. we can conceal our vices if we care to—for a time at least—but a virtue will out.

can't make out how you stand london society. the thing has gone to the dogs: a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.

you don't know what an existence they lead down there. it is pure, unadulterated country life. they get up early because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.

nothing is so fatal to a personality as the keeping of promises, unless it be telling the truth.

who cares whether mr ruskin's views on turner are sound or not? what does it matter? that mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is, at least, as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in england's gallery—greater, indeed, one is apt to think at times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring but on account of the fuller variety of its appeal—soul speaking to soul in those long, cadenced lines, not through form and colour alone, though through these, indeed, completely and without loss, but with intellectual and emotional utterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought, with imaginative insight and with poetic aim—greater, i always think, even as literature is the greater art.

laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

mrs cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the park every afternoon at 5.30. i am sure she adores scandals, and that the sorrow of her life at present is that she can't manage to have enough of them.

the world divides actions into three classes: good actions, bad actions that you may do, and bad actions that you may not do. if you stick to the good actions you are respected by the good. if you stick to the bad actions that you may do you are respected by the bad. but if you perform the bad actions that no one may do then the good and the bad set upon you and you are lost indeed.

i choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

the artist is the creator of beautiful things.

to me the word 'natural' means all that is middle class, all that is of the essence of jingoism, all that is colourless and without form and void. it might be a beautiful word, but it is the most debased coin in the currency of language.

i pity any woman who is married to a man called john. she would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude.

it is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have learned the art of living.

to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.