When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.

Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.

The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Whatever is the lot of humankind I want to taste within my deepest self. I want to seize the highest and the lowest, to load its woe and bliss upon my breast, and thus expand my single self titanically and in the end go down with all the rest.