Quote collection
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"Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years."
"If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none."
"By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary."
"In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness."
"The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language."
"The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power."
"I am a part and parcel of God."
"God is our name for the last generalization to which we can arrive."
"Do not speak of God much. After a very little conversation on the highest nature, thought deserts us and we run into formalism."
"The aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic."
"The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go."
"It depends little on the object, much on the mood, in art."
"It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no."
"We are ashamed of our thoughts and often see them brought forth by others."
"Society has no bribe for me."
"When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race."
"The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture...food for our mind, as well as our body."
"God hides things by putting them near us."
"This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues."
"The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. He becomes acquainted with the resistances and with his own tools; increases his skill and strength and learns the favorable moments and favorable accidents."