Help me to discover Thy truth, O Lord, and preserve me from those who have already found it

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

To tremble before anticipated evils is to bemoan what thou hast never lost.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery."

The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.