A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.

Mannerism always wants to be finished and doesn't enjoy the process. Genuine, truly great talent, however, finds its greatest satisfaction in the production.

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

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.

We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.