“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.”

As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.

Happiness is the only thing I understand.

When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas.

Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

While I have very little to say in favor of sex (it’s vastly overrated, it’s frequently unnecessary, and it’s messy), it is greatly to be preferred to the interminable torments of romantic agony through which two people tear one another limb from limb while professing altruistic devotion.

It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.

I never spend my time doing anything I’ll have to do again tomorrow.

Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.

If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

God is more eager to answer than we are to ask.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

Either you’re a person who will be stopped, or you are a person who won’t be stopped. You choose.

The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

We are not separated from spirit, we are in it.

Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders.

When you’re young, you’re stupid. You do silly things.

To cultivate an English accent is already a departure away from what you are.