Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?

Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.