A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.

History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious.

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.