Shallow men believe in luck.

A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?