Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired.

Completely true to nature!' - what a lie: / How could nature ever be constrained into a picture? / The smallest bit of nature is infinite! / And so he paints what he likes about it. / And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!

The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.

Everyone who enjoys supposes that the tree was concerned with the fruit, but it was really concerned with the seed. -In this lies the difference between all those who create and those who enjoy.

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won’t chime.

The English are the people of consummate cant.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.