The dead sleep in their moonless night; my business is with the living.

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.

Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.

It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.

But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world.

In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say.

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.