“envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition – only to his getting it.”

All really frank people are amusing, and would remain so if they could remember that other people may sometimes want to be frank and amusing too.

As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.

Everything comes to the man who won’t wait.

Some men are born husbands; they have a passion for domesticity, for a fireside, for a home. Yet, curiously, these men very rarely stay at home. Apparently what they want is to have a place to get away from.

The Futurists?…. Well, of course, they are already past.

It depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can’t be real. It ought to be but it isn’t. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn’t say it.

To a woman–I mean, a nice woman–there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.

Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin,

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.

It is all very well to say that children are happier with mud pies and rag dolls than with these elaborate delights.

Thou canst not serve both cod and salmon.

She suspected him of infidelity, with and without reason, morning, noon and night.

A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.

When I see a cheerful young man shrieking about how full of life he is, banging on a drum, and blowing on a tin trumpet, and speaking of his good spirits

There may be something in this theory, but when their amusements are carried to such a point of luxurious and imaginative perfection it certainly gives them great and even unlimited enjoyment at the time.

Many women I know think the ideal of happiness is to be in love with a great man, or to be the wife of a great public success; to share his triumph! They forget you share the man as well!

Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power

There is no merit where there is no trial; and till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, and faith for falsehood.

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.

Numbers on a screen for merit, A falsehood of an ideal you. Roll the dice and pay your price. A great pride in your work you must pursue.

Don’t be a slave to modern vices, Chasing false merit, distraction untoward. Take time for yourself, to be alone with your thoughts. Imagination the real reward.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

I won’t touch on risky, because that’s subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.