No More Learning

To the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just
as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so
completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

The only horrible thing in the world is 'ennui. ' That is the one sin for
which there is no forgiveness.

French songs I cannot possibly allow. People always seem to think that
they are improper, and either look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh,
which is worse.

It has often been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of
letters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature.
As a rule this must necessarily be so. That very concentration of vision
and inversity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic
temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are
preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of so much
importance.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator. The spectator is not to
dominate the work of art.

One should sympathise with the joy, the beauty, the colour of life. The
less said about life's sores the better.

You can't make people good by act of Parliament--that is something.
Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and having done so passes
on to other things. Nature, on the other hand, forgetting that imitation
can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating the effect
until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things
against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to
him non-existent.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who
would tell one that would tell one anything.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively
brutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand
it as well as we do.

The truth is a thing I get rid of as soon as possible. Bad habit, by the
way, makes one very unpopular at the club . . . with the older members.
They call it being conceited.