I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

An ugly woman, married to King Henry VIII, would have defied the axe and daunted her husband's infidelities.

Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

True love rules especially through memory.

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

Sensuality is the death of the soul.

Tradesmen regard an author with a mixed feeling of terror, compassion and curiosity.