How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's life. It is what hehas become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.