You must find the ideas that have some promise in them... It is not enough to just have ideas.

Thrashing is not the most noticeably awful of disappointments. Not to have attempted is the genuine disappointment.

A marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre.

You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman.

Much of a poet's experience takes place in imagination only; the life he tells is oftenest the life that he strongly desires to live, and the power, the purity and height of his utterance may not seldom be the greater because experience here uses the voices of desire.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.