Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

What is art? Nature concentrated.

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.

A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.

Society is no more indulgent than was the God of Genesis.

A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.