When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.

No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

Past art is subject to change.