We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping along after a fox--the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies. Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they are! There is animalism in the soul, and the body has its moments of spirituality. The senses can refine and the intellect can degrade. Who can say where the fleshly impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins? How shallow are the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Is the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or is the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, and the unison of spirit with matter is a mystery also. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written-that is all. Marriage is a sort of forcing house. It brings strange sins to fruit, and sometimes strange renunciations. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. A sense of duty is like some horrible disease. It destroys the tissues of the mind, as certain complaints destroy the tissues of the body. The catechism has a great deal to answer for. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Few people have sufficient strength to resist the preposterous claims of orthodoxy. She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman. A virtue is like a city set upon a hill--it cannot be hid. We can conceal our vices if we care to--for a time at least--but a virtue will out. Can't make out how you stand London society. The thing has gone to the dogs: a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure, unadulterated country life. They get up early because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about. Nothing is so fatal to a personality as the keeping of promises, unless it be telling the truth.