Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling eventide ere they give themselves up wholly to feeling...

There is no Sixth Commandment in art. The poet is entitled to lay his hands on whatever material he finds necessary for his work.

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.

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

In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.

He is noble who both feels and acts nobly.