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.
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.
How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!
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.
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
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.
It is a happiness to wonder; – it is a happiness to dream.
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 bring. My passions from a common spring – from the same source I have not taken. My sorrow – I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone – and all I lov’d – I lov’d alone.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.