One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.