“The only real flesh was the flesh that existed in his imagination. Since, therefore, he regarded the flesh as an ideal abstraction, rather than as a physical fact, he had relied on his spiritual st...”

“The Imperial Concubine was fully aware of her own beauty, and she tended to be attracted by any force, such as religion, that treated her beauty and her high rank as things of no value.”

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”

“The blossoms seem unusually lovely this year. There were none of the scarlet-and-white-striped curtains that are set up among the blossoming trees so invariably that one has to come to think of the...”

“Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.”

“Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid ...”

“to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

“If you want to know what God thinks about any situation in the world, think like a parent.”

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”

“Every poet... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.”

“Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?”

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.”

“Nature: it might be the magical key to unlock a locked imagination.”

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”