When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

I think the first prerequisite to civilization is an ability to make polite conversation.

How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.