Quotes to inspire and reflect

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage?

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Melbourne is the kind of town that really makes you consider the question “Is there life after death?”

To Australia? Oh, don’t mention that dreadful vulgar place.

When I look at the map and see what an ugly-looking country Australia is, I feel as if I want to go there to see if it cannot be changed into a more beautiful form.

The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at 70, sooner than work at anything but his art.

She is like most artists; she is all style without any sincerity.

What is an artist? For every thousand people there’s 900 doing the work, 90 doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who’s the artist.

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts.

If that’s art, I’m a Hottentot!

There are moments when Art almost attains to the dignity of manual labor.

If Botticelli were alive today he’d be working for Vogue.

But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It’s clever, but is it art?”

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

I’ve finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied.

I don’t own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars—it’s a luxury I can’t afford.

He that lieth down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.

Life is a series of dogs.

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.

A man is like a cat; chase him and he’ll run; sit still and ignore him and he’ll come purring at your feet.

Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

Animals are my friends, and I don’t eat my friends.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Our most perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

The Americans are certainly great hero-worshipers, and always take heroes from the criminal classes.

The American man marries early, and the American woman marries often; and they get on extremely well together.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

In America, the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can’t completely ignore.

All Americans lecture, I believe. I suppose it is something in their climate.

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

That joke was lost on the foreigner—guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

Americans will always do the right thing, after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.

Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.

After four I’m under my host.