Power is the first good.

Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic.

Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.

No one suspects the days to be gods.

The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

It is rare to find a man who believes in his own thoughts or speaks that which he is created to say. As nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing, so nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own...feel yourself, and be not daunted by things...The light by which we see this world comes out from the soul of the observer.