Each of us has heaven and hell in him.

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

"I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane." "It never is, sir." "Lane, you're a perfect pessimist." "I do my best to give satisfaction, sir."

The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

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.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.