If you want to make life easy, make it hard.

Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.

Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life's tempestuous seas!

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.