“Happiness is the only thing I understand.”

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.

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.

I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.

The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong.

One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.

Calling Michelle ‘Obama Barack’s baby mama?’ Tell me, is that acceptable? But the Obamas aren’t the only targets. Fox’s pattern of race-baiting and fear-mongering regularly focuses on black leaders, black institutions and ordinary black people.

Dieting is the only game where you win when you lose!

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay.