Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.