The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.

Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.