“All truths are bloody truths to me.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.”

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!”

“In a seriously intended intellectual emancipation a person's mute passions and cravings also hope to find their advantage.”

“Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.”

“Without the great arts which speak to the sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, which warm and adorn him.”

“All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such success that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art.”