In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

Wisdom will never let us stand with any man on an unfriendly footing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy or intimacy to come. But whence and when: Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

A weed is a plant we've found no use for yet.

And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night.

Greatness once and forever has down with opinion.