The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.

The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.

The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar "queen", alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.

I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.