He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Where there is no love there is no understanding.

To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.