If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.

Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.

An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.