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.