Others

The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.

The people like neither the true nor the simple; they like novels and charlatans.

It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.

Oh better than the minting / Of a gold-crowned king / Is the safe-kept memory / Of a lovely thing.

When I can look Life in the eyes, / Grown calm and very coldly wise, / Life will have given me the Truth, / And taken in exchange—my youth.

Man becomes man only by the intelligence, but he is man only by the heart.

O, beauty, are you not enough? / Why am I crying after love?

I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

The only living language is the language in which we think and have our being.

To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.

Judges commonly are elderly men, and are more likely to hate at sight any analysis to which they are not accustomed, and which disturbs repose of mind, than to fall in love with novelties.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Florence she found perfectly sweet, Naples a dream, but very whiffy. In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.

Inventors and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers.

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try' to be “consistent.”

Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.

Talent is a very common family trait; genius belongs rather to individuals—just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either.

Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute.

A person of genius should marry a person of character. Genius does not herd with genius.

Freedom is a very great reality. But it means, above all things, freedom from lies.