Immortality—dazzling idea! who first imagined thee! Was it some jolly burgher of Nuremburg, who with night-cap on his head, and white clay pipe in mouth, sat on some pleasant summer evening before his door, and reflected in all his comfort, that it would be right pleasant, if, with unextinguishable pipe, and endless breath, he could thus vegetate onwards for a blessed eternity? Or was it a lover, who in the arms of his loved one, thought the immortality-thought, and that because he could think and feel naught beside!—Love! Immortality!

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.

Newness hath an evanescent beauty.

There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.

The people have no ear, either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for pianoforte playing and singing is thus all the more repulsive. There is nothing on earth more terrible than English music, except English painting.

Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.

Every woman is the gift of a world to me.