A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world.

One never hugs one's good luck so affectionately as when listening to the relation of some horrible misfortunes which has overtaken others.

Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.

The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning—first fallen flake of the coming snows of age—is a disagreeable thing.... So are flying twinges of gout, shortness of breath on the hill-side, the fact that even the moderate use of your friend's wines at dinner upsets you. These things are disagreeable because they tell you that you are no longer young—that you have passed through youth, are now in middle age, and faring onward to the shadows in which, somewhere, a grave is hid.

A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.