No More Learning

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves
and fibres and slowly built-up cells, in which thought hides itself and
passion has its dreams.

Man is a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex,
multiform creature that bears within itself strange legacies of thought
and passion, and whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies
of the dead.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she
is perfectly satisfied.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's
tragedies.

Public and private life are different things. They have different laws
and move on different lines.

When one is placed in the position of guardian one has to adopt a very
high moral tone on all subjects. It's one's duty to do so.

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married
should know either everything or nothing.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or
unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be
allowed to arrange for herself.

If the lower classes don't set us a good example what on earth is the
use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral
responsibility.
If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming she is only a female.

The world was made for men and not for women.

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own
individualism.

Why do you talk so trivially about life? Because I think that life is
far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use
to us.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the
remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when
to die.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better
they don't know anything at all.

Truth is a very complex thing and politics is a very complex business.
There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to
people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to
compromise. Everyone does.