The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.

The true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple.

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal.

Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.

Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture.

The secret of not having worries, for me at least, is to have ideas.

Real beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.