“Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.”

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.

Invisible things are the only realities.

Leave my loneliness unbroken.

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Trade your expectations for appreciation and the world changes for you.

Don’t expect everyone to cheer you on. God has put greatness in you. Don’t let their lack of support cause you to stay in the valley.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

If you’re absent during my struggle, don’t expect to be present during my success.