“In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature.”

“I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.”

“If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.”

“A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.”

“There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.”

“Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.”

“It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all.”