A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Man can find no better retreat from the world than art, and man can find no stronger link with the world than art.

You are, when all is done-just what you are.

Gray is the color of all theory

He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible.

One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home?

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.