The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.
The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one's head.
Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit.... They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.
The world is the expanding Greece and Greece is the shrinking world.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.