Bad cooks - and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen - have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.

You must climb above yourself-up and beyond, until you have even your stars under you.

Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

That whatever a man says, promises, or resolves in passion he must stick to later on when he is cold and sober--this demand is among the heaviest burdens that weigh on humankind.

Immortal is the moment when I engendered the recurrence. For the sake of this moment I bear the recurrence.

Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.

Speaking of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.