"You should hear them from the lips of one of the girls of Andalusia, whose cheeks seem to glow with the warmth of even a hotter sky than that of Spain, whose delicate hands and prettily turned ankles might serve for those of Mahometan houries, who speak their language with a sort of Oriental accent, and whose full, black eyes seem to shoot forth revelations of the depth and mystery of Eastern feeling. It is among the footsteps of Arabian beauty that you should listen to the last echoes of Arabian minstrelsy on the shores of western Europe" ('Moroccan Romances', Prose I 94).
"The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows, or breathing forth their sweetness from the secrecy of myrtle thickets and clumps of the fig-tree and pomegranate. The sounds I had heard seemed worthy to mingle with this bright and perfumed atmosphere, and to thrill the beautiful scenery around me" (Prose I 95).
"To me it seems that one of the most important requisites for a great poet is a luminous style. The elements of poetry lie in natural objects, in the vicissitudes of human life, in the emotions of the human heart, and the relations of man to man. He who can present them in combinations and lights which at once affect the mind with a deep sense of their truth and beauty, is the poet for his own age and the ages that succeed it" (Prose I 158).