Solitude is the safeguard of mediocrity. . . to genius the stern friend.

When Nature has work to be done, she create a genius to do it.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men--that is genius.

In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.