Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

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

Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.