It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating.

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.