Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.

Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

. . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.

Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.