No More Learning

To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his
temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of
reason.

The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply
our personalities.

In a temple everyone should be serious except the thing that is
worshipped.

We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom
one has ceased to love.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in
morals mean absolutely nothing.

To be in society is merely a bore, but to be out of it simply a tragedy.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve
that to give an interest to one's old age.

What man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but
simply life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he
can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever,
and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner,
healthier, more civilised, more himself.
Pleasure is nature's test, her
sign of approval. When man is happy he is in harmony with himself and
his environment.

Society often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.

It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so
difficult for them to have sympathy with thought.

Conversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself
on nothing.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that
no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the
priest, that gives us absolution.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating--people
who know absolutely everything and people who know absolutely nothing.

The public is wonderfully tolerant; it forgives everything except
genius.

Life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the
meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.

This horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think
the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that
there has been since that terrible thing they called the Higher
Education of Women was invented.

Once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully
effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that.