Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

History is the zoology of the human race.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

The question of what exactly we remember when we listen to old recordings, or whether it can be called remembering at all, becomes less and less answerable over a lifetime.

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted...Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

If the spiritual life be healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural.

Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.

The flourishing life cannot be achieved until we moderate our desires and see how superficial and fleeting they are.

We find what we expect to find. We do not see the world as it is but as we are.

It merely shews, after all, that affection is a habit.

Sometimes I think and other times I am.

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.

Any filmmaker would want to make something that can still be seen without someone saying, "Ugh that was repulsing, offensive, don't bother visiting it 2nd time."