Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

Hero-worship is the deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown . . . Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of men.

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.