No More Learning

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons.
What this century worships is wealth. The god of this century is wealth.
To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't
interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than
enough is as good as a feast.

The English can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right,
but they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong. It
is one of the best things in them.

Life is simply a 'mauvais quart d'heure' made up of exquisite moments.

There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and
innocence, go through it hand in hand. To shut one's eyes to half of
life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that
one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and
abominably conceited when they are not.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion,
enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting
clever people. This has become an absolute public nuisance.

I don't think man has much capacity for development. He has got as far
as he can, and that is not far, is it?

I am not quite sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I
do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot
be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy,
that is the explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation
of the next.

I do not approve of anything that that tampers with natural arrogance.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is
gone.

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately,
in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it
did it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably
lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.