And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.