Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth. Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones. Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable. But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is going good. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone. Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon. In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. | 
