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

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given.

A man's perfection is his work.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.