I remember my youth... the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.

It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in cold, darkness and silence. In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, and knowledge, and even for beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of one's clothes in a community of blind men.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.

A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale.