Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.

Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.

Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.