Bokelskere.no

Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrés

To get back my youth I would do anything, except take excercise, get up early or be respectable.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

'It is perfectly monstrous,' he said at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind ones back that are absolutely and entirely true.'

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.