I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.
I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.
There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much.
Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration.
We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it.
Health is the first muse, comprising the magical benefits of air, landscape, and bodily exercise on the mind.
Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live.
With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together.
Ah Fate, cannot a man Be wise without a beard? East, West, from Beer to Dan, Say, was it never heard That wisdom might in youth be gotten, Or wit be ripe before ’t was rotten?
Solitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods!
Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love.
Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities?
Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.
The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.
Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books...
Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.
Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth.
When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.