“None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.”

“None so good that he has no faults, None so wicked that he is worth naught.”

“There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.”

“It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows.”

“We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands.”

“There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.”

“Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)”