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

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.

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.

Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.