Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves... He must have the passion of a lover.

I had my dreams of Venice, but nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found.

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses.

Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders.