The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

Under the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.