No More Learning

In every sphere of life form is the beginning of things. The rhythmic,
harmonious gestures of dancing convey, Plato tells us, both rhythm and
harmony into the mind. Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman, in one
of those great moments of sincerity that make us admire and know the
man. He was right, though he may not have known how terribly right he
was. The creeds are believed not because they are rational but because
they are repeated. Yes; form is everything. It is the secret of life.
Find expression for a sorrow and it will become dear to you. Find
expression for a joy and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you wish to love?
Use love's litany and the words will create the yearning from which the
world fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that corrodes your
heart? Learn its utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance and
you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation and that
form, which is the birth of passion, is also the death of pain. And so,
to return to the sphere of art, it is form that creates not merely the
critical temperament but also the aesthetic instinct that reveals to one
all things under the condition of beauty. Start with the worship of form
and there is no secret in art that will not be revealed to you.
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common-sense, and
discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are
one's mistakes.

Lady Henry Wotton was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if
they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was
usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned,
she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque but only
succeeded in being untidy.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

With an evening coat and a white tie anybody, even a stockbroker, can
gain a reputation for being civilised.

There is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad
one has been. It is intellectually fascinating. One of the greatest
pleasures of having been wicked is that one has so much to say to the
good.

Laws are made in order that people in authority may not remember them,
just as marriages are made in order that the divorce court may not play
about idly.

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

Never marry a woman with straw-coloured hair. They are so sentimental.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all
afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.