“The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.

A man’s grammar, like Caesar’s wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!

And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.

All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Lord, help my poor soul.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone.

And I fell violently on my face.

Art is to look at not to criticize.

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

The leader of the genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.

Genius lives only one story above the madness.

Progress and civilization are the results of the efforts of genius, not the gossip of the majority.

Genius is talent exercised with courage.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

Real genius moves in silence.

It is the privilege of true genius, And especially genius who opens up a new path, To make great mistakes with impunity.