Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.

In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.

We cannot too soon convince ourselves how easily we may be dispensed with in the world. What important personages we imagine ourselves to be! We think that we alone are the life of the circle in which we move; in our absence, we fancy that life, existence, breath will come to a general pause, and, alas, the gap which we leave is scarcely perceptible, so quickly is it filled again; nay, it is often the place, if not of something better, at least for something more agreeable.

Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.

What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.