No More Learning

Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life,
just as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not
necessarily realistic in an age of realism nor spiritual in an age of
faith. So far from being the creation of its time it is usually in
direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us
is the history of its own progress.

People who mean well always do badly. They are like the ladies who wear
clothes that don't fit them in order to show their piety. Good
intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the
improbable.

When art is more varied nature will, no doubt, be more varied also.

If a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a
lie he might just as well speak the truth at once.

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact;
the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of
fiction.

Nature is no great mother who has home us. She is our own creation. It
is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see
them, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have
influenced us.
To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing.
One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

The proper school to learn art in is not life but art.

I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice,
or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too
much.

I wouldn't marry a man with a future before him for anything under the
sun.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly, but
I don't see any chance of it just at present.

Modern memoirs are generally written by people who have entirely lost
their memories and have never done anything worth recording.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Women are like minors, they live upon their expectations.

Twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies.

It is the very passions about whose origin we deceive ourselves that
tyrannise most strongly over us. Our weakest motives are those of whose
nature we are conscious. It often happens that when we think we are
experimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the
noblest motives.