Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.