“You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.”

“I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.”

“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”

“But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours. Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there has never been an artistic age, or an artistic people since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception.”

“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”

“Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin.”

“Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?”