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.

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is.

All men in the abstract are just and good.

What you do thunders above your head so loudly, I cannot hear the words you speak.

The idiot, the Indian, the child and unschooled farmer's boy stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature.