Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.