I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable.

Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.