Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Immitation is suicide.

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.