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Imagination grows by exercise and contrary to common belief is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

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I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

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Impropriety is the soul of wit.

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And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Me...more

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I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create...more

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I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

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Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

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Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that ev...more

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I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

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To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults.

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Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful se...more

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Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, ...more

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A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real m...more

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He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to an orgy of lust, but he hated the instincts that robbed him o...more