We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.