Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

In married life three is company and two none.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

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

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

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

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

True friends stab you in the front.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Who, being loved, is poor?

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Everything popular is wrong.

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

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

There’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

There is no sin except stupidity.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

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

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

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

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.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

All art is quite useless.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

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

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

A true friend stabs you in the front.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I can resist everything except temptation.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.