The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.

True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.