Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give; when to this truth you waken then you begin to live.

So far as regards their moral character, the Finns have as little cause for reproach as any other people.

Could one live on the sense of beauty alone, exempt from the necessity of 'creature comforts,' a sea-voyage would be delightful.

I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of 7 or 8 years and which drove me to desperate attempts at imitation.

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.