No More Learning

The more we study art the less we care for Nature. What art really
reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her
extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. . . . It is
fortunate for us, however, that nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we
should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant
attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of
nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It
resides in the imagination or fancy or cultivated blindness of the man
who looks at her.

Facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history but they are
usurping the domain of fancy and have invaded the kingdom of romance.
Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarising mankind.

Ordinary people wait till life discloses to them its secrets, but to the
few, to the elect, the mysteries of life are revealed before the veil is
drawn away. Sometimes this is the effect of art, and chiefly of the art
of literature which deals immediately with the passions and the
intellect.
But now and then a complex personality takes the place and
assumes the office of art, is, indeed, in its way a real work of art,
Life having its elaborate masterpieces just as poetry has, or sculpture,
or painting.

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it
just as they die of any other disease.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite
and it leaves one unsatisfied.

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.