Sorrow makes us all children again.
The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.
There are some men above grief and some men below it.
In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin, – seven or eight ancestors at least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.
Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?
Music causes us to think eloquently.
A friend is the hope of the heart.
Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.
Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.
Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
A man is a god in ruins.
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Fractures well cured make us more strong.
History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.