Genius differs from talent not by the amount of original thoughts, but by making the latter fertile and by positioning them properly, in other words, by integrating everything into a whole, whereas talent produces only fragments, no matter how beautiful.
Today is, after all, today, but yesterday is of the same substance as tomorrow.
Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.
A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.
Prose and poetry are as different as food and drink.
Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.
Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship.
Why does the past look so enticing to us? For the same reason why from a distance a meadow with flowers looks like a flower bed.
Jealousy is a grievous passion that jealously seeks what causes grief.
The real genres: good and bad.
Love! Hate! Is there no third?
The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.
Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.
