Perfect Beauty Implies Perfect Simplicity, A Quality

If Painters Left Nothing Of Themselves After Their Deaths, So That We Were Obliged To Rank Them As We Do Actors According To The Judgment Of Their Contemporaries, How Different Their Reputations Would Be From What Posterity Has Made Them!

Delsarte Tells Me That Mozart Stole Outrageously From Galuppi, In The Same Way, I Suppose, That Molière Stole From Anybody Anywhere, If He Found Something Work Taking. I Said That What Was Mozart Had Not Been Stolen From Galuppi, Or From Anyone Else For That Matter.

We Should Not Allow Ourselves To Believe That Writers Like Poe Have More Imagination Than Those Who Are Content With Describing Things As They Really Are. It Is Surely Easier To Invent Striking Situations In This Way Than To Tread The Beaten Track Which Intelligent Minds Have Followed Throughout The Centuries.

Experience Alone Can Give, Even To The Greatest Talent, That Confidence In Having Done All That Could Be Done.

Mediocre People Have An Answer For Everything And Are Astonished At Nothing. They Always Want To Have The Air Of Knowing Better Than You What You Are Going To Tell Them; When, In Their Turn, They Begin To Speak, They Repeat To You With The Greatest Confidence, As If Dealing With Their Own Property, The Things That They Have Heard You Say Yourself At Some Other Place. A Capable And Superior Look Is The Natural Accompaniment Of This Type Of Character.