Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
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We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.
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He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion – these are the two things that govern us. And yet –
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Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
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Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
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Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!
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Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
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Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.
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The only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
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He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
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And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
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“Love?” “An illusion.” “Religion?” “The fashionable substitute for belief.” “You are a sceptic.” “Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith.” “What are you?” “To define is to limit.”
