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The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think.
If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.
the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self.
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these
when thought has seared your forehead with its lines,
Why should it keep what I must lose?
And unselfish people are colourless.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
To become the spectator of one’s own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life.
no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself.
In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin.
“You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.”
“Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,”
It seems to me that you are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you.
