If it is not nailed to the floor, it's mine. If I can pry it loose, it is not nailed down.

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.