“art is the objectification of feeling”

“Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on.”

“Instinct and study, love and hate;Audacity-reverence. These must mate,And fuse with Jacob's heart,To wrestle with the angel -- Art.”

“Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.”

“I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.”

“I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace -- for motionlessness -- for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying.”

“I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality”