Preparations are good in life, prologues ruinous.
Spirits that have once been sincerely united and tended together a sacred flame, never become entirely stranger to one another’s life.
Be what you would seem to be.
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.
We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed.
Truth is the nursing mother of genius.
The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.
You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.
Woman is born for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it.
The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.
This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.
The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed.
Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.
Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.
Some degree of expression is necessary for growth, but it should be little in proportion to the full life.
Not one man, in the million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the belief that woman was made for man...
Give me truth; cheat me by no illusion.
The life of the soul is incalculable.
Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.
How anyone can remain a Catholic – I mean who has ever been aroused to think, and is not biased by the partialities of childish years – after seeing Catholicism here in Italy I cannot conceive.