Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.