All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds