Others

All art is immoral. . . . For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life, and of that practical organization of life that we call society.

The criticism which I have quoted is criticism of the highest kind. It treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself . . . to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final.

More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at all. That is a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Anybody can write a three-volumed novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

[George] Meredith’s a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as medium for writing in prose.

[George] Meredith’s a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as medium for writing in prose.

Day by day the old order of things changes, and new modes of thought pass over our world, and it may be that, before many years, talking will have taken the place of literature, and the personal screech silenced the music of impersonal utterance. Something of the dignity of the literary calling will probably be lost, and it is perhaps a dangerous thing for a country to be too eloquent.

That he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.

Pathology is rapidly becoming the basis of sensational literature, and in art, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters.

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.

Imagination! who can sing thy force?

[ Response when asked which film directors he mostadmired :] I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

[ Of a Hollywood movie studio :] This is the biggest electric train [set] any boy ever had!

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of makingan after-dinner speech without the help ofpoetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.

Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It isabout simple awareness—awareness of what isso real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

Le sens commun est fort rare .

Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits, ne sont que des fables convenues .

Very learned women are to be found, in thesame manner as female warriors; but they areseldom or never inventors.

Il meglio, è l’inimico del bene .