Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us.

The way to perfection is through a series of disgusts

To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.

Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

The problem with most people who say they believe, however, is that said belief is only a thin layer of solid ice which rests over a vast ocean that is likewise deep with non-solid disbelief.

Those who have trusted where they ought not, will surely mistrust where they ought not."-Marie von Ebnuer-Eschenbach

As for peace, it was never free and laws were made to be broken. Peacemaker or lawbreaker, someone, somewhere always paid the price no matter what side of the words they were on.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world

As time passes, my story fades away.

Women are far and away the bigger consumers of fiction than men, but men are still far and away the more reviewed, the more critically esteemed, the more respected. That can get frustrating.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk.

The ego needs recognition. The spirit does not need to thank itself.