All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.

Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us an uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy-since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.

By a route obscure and lonely Haunted by ill angels only, Where an eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule -- From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE, out of TIME.

Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.