No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class.

The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination's activities.

Fame compensates for a column of wants.

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

A man is more than one being in his life. If the last persists, why not the first? If there be a hereafter for his age, why not for his youth?

The French are a race of individuals. There is no type.

[Alexander] Hamilton estimated portrait painters as thieves of time.