I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.