Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.

The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.

We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand.

The solution of every problem is another problem