[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.

Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

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

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

A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.

Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.