The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather- beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.

All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.

Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.

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.

The swan, like the soul of the poet, By the dull world is ill understood.

Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.

The fountain of love is the rose and the lily, the sun and the dove.