Since people no longer attend church, theater remains as the only public service, and literature as the only private devotion.

Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.

The courts used to be, fair and square, the avengers of secular crimes; but nowadays they demand respect even for the criminal.

Prose talks and poetry sings.

This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.

The real genres: good and bad.

They are miserly, the princes of Austria, you need not grieve about it; they may not donate anything, but they allow themselves tobe fleeced, the good lords.