Sickness sensitizes man for observation, like a photographic plate.

The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

Princes enjoy themselves like children in the company of ordinary human beings.

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

One of the proud joys of the man of letters - if that man of letters is an artist - is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world's memory.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.