From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.

As much wisdom may be expended on a private economy as on an empire, and as much wisdom may be drawn from it.

How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely.

Not in nature but in man is all the beauty and worth he sees. The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, exalting soul for all its pride.

Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.

An actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel.