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

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.

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

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

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

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

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

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.

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.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.