One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.

Art is a delayed echo.

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.