If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.