Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Rugged and c as he was, there was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its tenderness.
Why is it that I can't feel this tragedy as much as I want to?
He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.
Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth.
A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Mere words.. Was there anything so real as words?
Had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.
Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly for it expresses a need.
When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.
People die of common sense.
Details are always vulgar.
The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.
To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.
I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.
Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.
A mask tells us more than a face.
Most people are boring and stupid.
When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.