What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

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.

Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.

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.

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

Each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world.

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.