Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.

If everyone sweeps before his own front door, then the street is clean.

Writing is busy idleness.

What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.

Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael.

That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.

Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.