If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are

One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment.

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.

A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.

"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.” 

“The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.” 

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely… but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them.

“because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.” 

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish.

“The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.” 

“I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.” 

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.” 

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.