They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is what it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very badcompany, and was never invited to dinner.