“And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.”

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.”

“Mi bella princesa, your funny little dwarf will never dance again. It is a pity; for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile. 'But why will he never dance again?' asked the Infanta laughing. “Because his heart is broken”, answered the Chamberlain.”

“Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life.”

“Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.”

“My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.”

“He read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile.”