When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.

The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew.

See only that thou work and thou canst not escape the reward.

One must be an inventor to read well.