From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

I love the majesty of human suffering.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

Poetry is the disease of the brain.