Quote collection
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"It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly."
"The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others."
"There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again."
"Who enslaves another's manhood with weak human power alone, Lays a heavier yoke of bondage thoughtlessly upon his own."
"Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms."
"To every one [Nature] appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same."
"The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything."
"There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal."
"A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it."
"If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them."
"Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist."
"Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy."
"If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well."
"Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge."
"Beauty can never really understand itself."
"When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art."
"It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself."
"Lose this day loitering 'Twill be the same old story, Tomorrow and the next, Even more dilatory. Whatever you would do, Or dream of doing, begin it! Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it. Begin it now."
"Win for yourself that which your fathers have won."
"Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour."