Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panza's who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixote's with a sense for ideals, but mad.

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

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