In those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity.

It is not the fear of death which creates the desire for immortality, but the desire for immortality which causes the fear of death.

Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.

Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared.

No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.

But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery.