“politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.”

“You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.”

“From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.”

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

“I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.”

“Duty is what one expects from others.”

“You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.”