A Good Artist Ought Never To Allow

So Now, From This Mad Passion Which Made Me Take Art For An Idol And A King I Have Learnt The Burden Of Error That It Bore And What Misfortune Springs From Man's Desire... The World's Frivolities Have Robbed Me Of The Time That I Was Given For Reflecting Upon God.

If People Knew How Hard I Worked At My Art, They Would Not Consider Me A Genius.

There Is No Tongue To Speak His Eulogy; Too Brightly Burned His Splendour For Our Eyes: Far Easier To Condemn His Injurers, Than For The Tongue To Reach His Smallest Worth. He To The Realms Of Sinfulness Came Down, To Teach Mankind; Ascending Then To God, Heaven Unbarred To Him Her Lofty Gates, To Whom His Country Hers Refused To Ope. Ungrateful Land, To Its Own Injury Nurse Of His Fate! Well Too Does This Instruct, That Greatest Ills Fall To The Perfectest. And 'midst A Thousand Proofs, Let This Suffice, That, As His Exile Had No Parallel, So Never Was There Man More Great Than He.

What Spirit Is So Empty And Blind, That It Cannot Recognize The Fact That The Foot Is More Noble Than The Shoe, And Skin More Beautiful Than The Garment With Which It Is Clothed?

You Must Know That I Am, Of All Men Who Were Ever Born, The Most Inclined To Love Persons. Whenever I Behold Someone Who Possesses Any Talent Or Displays Any Dexterity Of Mind, Who Can Do Or Say Something More Appropriately Than The Rest Of The World, I Am Compelled To Fall In Love With Him; And Then I Give Myself Up To Him So Entirely That I Am No Longer My Own Property, But Wholly His.