“I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five”

“Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

“I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

“The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.”

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”