Talent does whatever it wants to do. Genius does only what it can.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.

Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.

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

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.