The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.

When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

It is impossible that beauty should ever distinctly appreciate itself.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.

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