One cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul.

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place.

Resist nothing but temptation.

I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity.

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.

I feel I must come with you. And will you talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do.

These days man knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.