I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”

If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.