Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself.

Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious.

Skepticism . . . is not intellectual only it is moral also, a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.