The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. - Joseph Conrad

Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which is art.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious.