An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Nothing can be preserved that is not good.

Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.