It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.
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.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
All art is quite useless.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.