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