Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitations of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination. The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal. As for believing things, I can believe anything provided that it is quite incredible. 'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world 'Be thyself' shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply: 'Be thyself.' That is the secret of Christ. London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognise them, they look so thoroughly unhappy. For those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection. The English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it. Men always fall into the absurdity of endeavouring to develop the mind, to push it violently forward in this direction or in that. The mind should be receptive, a harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to be ruffled, not a bustling busybody for ever trotting about on the pavement looking for a new bun shop. There is nothing more beautiful than to forget, except, perhaps, to be forgotten. All bad art comes from returning to life and nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and nature may sometimes be used as part of art's rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions. The moment art surrenders its imaginative medium it surrenders everything. As a method realism is a complete failure, and the two things that every artist should avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter. Men may have women's minds just as women may have the minds of men. London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs I don't know. How marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive. He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man nowadays. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us or affects us in any way, either for pain or pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art. I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet: it is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it.