The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.

There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.

The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.

True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.

Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

As a remedy against all ills; poverty, sickness, and melancholy only one thing is absolutely necessary; a liking for work.

Nothing can be done except little by little.