Quote collection
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"I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me."
"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"
"I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty."
"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."
"The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral."
"It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for."
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them."
"The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members."
"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."
"People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all."
"Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary."
"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."
"Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds."
"The one charm of the past is that it is the past."
"I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean."
"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise for which we are later, in the fullness of time and understanding, very grateful for!"
"Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it."
"Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly."
"If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk."
"As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."