It is with literature as with law or empire — an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.
I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.
How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!
The true genius shudders at incompleteness, imperfection, and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.
That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.