Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad.

It is always our treasure that the lightning strikes.

In the gates of eternity the black hand and the white hand hold each other with equal clasp.

Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason's sign, they reveal the initiated to each other.

There is no phase of the Italian mind that has not found expression in its music.

...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.