Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue.

We must be our own before we can be another's.

The finished man of the world must eat of every apple at once. He must hold his hatreds also at arm's length, and not remember spite. He has neither friends nor enemies, but values men only as channels of power.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well.