The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar.

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols.

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

It is not true that a man can believe or disbelieve what he will. But it is certain that an active desire to find any proposition true will unconsciously tend to that result by dismissing importunate suggestions which run counter to the belief, and welcoming those which favor it. The psychological law, that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence.

No man ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.