I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.