I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

It doesn't matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.

A little light, like a rushlight / to lead back to splendour.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati...when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot.