Why was I born with such contemporaries?

To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

Men are products, expressions, reflections; they live to the extent that they coincide with their epoch, or to the extent that they differ markedly from it.

Great artists are products of their own time: they do not spring forth fully equipped from the head of Jove, but are formed by the circumstances acting upon th…