Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

I am better than my reputation

The average estimate themselves by what they do, the above average by what they are.

The world is ruled only by consideration of advantages.

A pity about the people! they are brave enough comrades, but they have heads like a soapboiler's.

The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter.