The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious.

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins.

Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!

There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.

A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.