Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts.