“After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skeleton, was the result. This was the advantage of this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style was so sober that it became lean.”

“His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.”

“Thou art free!”

“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”

“The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.”

“We all know the artfulness with which a dropped coin hides itself, and the job we have to find it again. There are thoughts which play the same trick on us, rolling into a buried corner of our minds; and there it is, they've gone forever, we can't put our finger on them.”

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”