To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius.

The grand style follows suit with all great passion. It disdains to please, it forgets to persuade. It commands. It wills.

What? A great man? I only ever see the ape of his own ideal.

They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer; and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!

Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers. Of what account are the rest? The rest are simply... humanity. One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul- in contempt.

Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.