Habit and imitation--there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice, and all learning, in this world.

Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age.

The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.

Every poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds himself born in the midst of prose; h e has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

There is so much data available to us, but most data won't help us succeed.

Is not light grander than fire?