“In olden days people were worse than us but knew much more than us.”

“Pride is the chalice into which all human sins are poured: it glitters and jingles and its arabesque lures your gaze, while your lips involuntarily touch the seductive beverage.”

“(Uncle) would remark that it was impossible to get by without such a (portentous and whimsical) tone when speaking of many things of this world, and especially of the things not entirely of this world.”

“In olden days people were worse than us but knew much more than us.”

“Nothing so removes a man from his inner, mysterious, real life, nothing makes him so deaf and dumb as the picture of these petty passions and petty crimes which calls itself the world of politics.”

“It’s quite certain there are places to which the whole past is as though attached, on which are traced in secret letters for people who are centuries removed from us their thoughts, their will…”

“The soulless have no need of melancholia”