I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.

We must for dear life make our own counter-realities.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn´e: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.

The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.

It had been agreed between them that lighted candles at wayside inns, in strange countries amid mountain scenery, gave the evening meal a peculiar poetry.

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.