If I love you, what business is it of yours?

It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery."

I am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to the light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet cannot succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful.

Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society.

True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.