But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror,and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.

Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.

Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.