The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Writing is the supreme solace.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.