No More Learning

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He
is the very basis of civilised society.

It is quite a mistake to believe, as many people do, that the mind shows
itself in the face. Vice may sometimes write itself in lines and changes
of contour, but that is all. Our faces are really masks given to us to
conceal our minds with.

What on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence? A
carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the
caprice lasts a little longer.

People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so,
but at least it is not so superficial as thought is.

It is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the
trade name of the firm--that is all.

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.