Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.

Never ask a bore a question.

Opportunity knocks, but doesn't always answer to its name.

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.

If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.

The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.

The man in the street is always a stranger.

When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.

Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.

Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.

The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.

Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

Hatred observes with more care than love does.

Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.

After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.

Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.

Malice is always authentic and sincere.

Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.

The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.

Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.

Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.

Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother's hatred still comes as a surprise.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

Other people's beliefs may be myths, but not mine.

Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

Rereading, we find a new book.

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

Young men preen. Old men scheme.

General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.

Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.

In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.