People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.

Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered.

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

Nature has neither core nor skin: she’s both at once outside and in.

A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.

New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.