“Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.”

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.”

“The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.”

“An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. It starts in the right manner.”

“But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.”

“It is very wrong to kill any one[.]""Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!”