Quote collection
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"The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices."
"There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power."
"The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature."
"Let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich."
"Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise."
"Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals the fixed species; through many species the genus; through all genera the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same."
"How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment."
"A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide."
"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection."
"See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward."
"We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted."
"Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better."
"A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them."
"Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains."
"Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone."
"O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught."
"And what is Genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfection of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same? It looks to the cause and life: it proceeds from within outward, whilst Talent goes from without inward."
"Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them."
"What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed."
"When the gods come among men, they are not known."