Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.
Oscar Wilde
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.
Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.
To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.
Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.
It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
Fame is something that must be won. Honor is something that must not be lost.
The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
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