True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

People always fancy that we must become old to become wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were.

Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.

Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.