Quotes by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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The feeling of art implies a vivid and intimate feeling of things. While most people remain on the surface and apparent, while philosophers themselves recognize and ascertain a je ne sais quoi beyond phenomena, without being able to determine its nature, the artist, as if endowed with a sense apart, he feels beneath the apparent world the other, entirely inner world, which most ignore and whose existence philosophers are content to ascertain: he exists at the invisible play of forces and sympathizes with them, as if they were souls; he received, from birth, the key of symbols and the understanding of figures; what seems incoherent and contradictory to others is, for him, only a harmonic contrast, a distant chord on the universal lyre. He himself soon enters into this great concert, and, like the bronze vessels of ancient theaters, accompanies the echo of his voice with the music of the world.

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Keep your youth - you will have poetry.

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The necessary complement of any success is the anger of the mean and jealous.