Quote collection
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"Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing."
"I claim to be a conscientiously immoral writer."
"The more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning which fewtrustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained."
"I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, ininvention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means."
"Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention."
"Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt."
"I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays. That is not necessary. If they will only pronounce the correct sounds I can guarantee the results."
"Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence."
"If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt"
"The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to."
"If you cannot have what you believe in you must believe in what you have."
"If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise or any such thing, the starting point is this : God is."
"The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate."
"Marriage is tolerable enough in its way if youre easygoing and dont expect too much from it. But it doesnt bear thinking about."
"Get married, but never to a man who is home all day."
"All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport - in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy."
"Youth, what a pity to waste it on the young."
"When you find something funny search it for hidden truth."
"The Englishmen is at his best on the links and at his worst in the Cabinet."
"There is only one person an English girl hates more than she hates her elder sister; and that is her mother."