Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.

By beauty of course I mean truth, for the one involves the other; it is only the false in art which is ugly, and it is only the ugly that is universal.

Do not trouble yourselves about standards or ideals; but try to be faithful and natural: remember that there is no greatness, no beauty, which does not come from truth to your own knowledge of things; and keep on working, even if your work is not long remembered.

The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.

Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?