“A great mind must be androgynous.”

Experience informs us that the first defence of weak minds is to recriminate.

With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes,

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius – the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:–for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty.

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.

And in today already walks tomorrow.

Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!

I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every Thing has a Life of its own, and that we are all one Life.

One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one’s mind: this is a temptation one must resist.

If one is to learn to live with the dead, one must first learn to live with the living!

If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.

Even when all is known, the care of a man is not yet complete, because eating alone will not keep a man well; he must also take exercise. For food and exercise, while possessing opposite qualities, yet work together to produce health.

Indians, of course, have no “theology,” and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.

Life is too short so we must generalize.

I don’t take anything personal. I just have a certain file in my head, so Earthlings must be careful with what they say.

The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer. He must imagine, and imagination takes humility, love and great courage. How can you create a character without live and the struggle that goes with love?