Do you count your birthdays with gratitude?

Poetry is like painting: one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance.

Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue.

The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

"Painters and poets," you say, "have always had an equal license in bold invention." We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.