The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.

Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused.

History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.