Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

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.

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.

Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

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.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.