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

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing

In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.

By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.

In art, the best is good enough.

Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.