“Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.”

“You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.”

“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.”

“Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.”

“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”

“To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.”

“Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.”