Words are intermediary between thought and things. We express ourselves really not through words, which are only signs, but through what they signify - through things.

We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves.

The language of literature is the language of all the world. It is necessary to divest ourselves at once of the notion of diversified vocal and grammatical speech which constitutes the various tongues of the Earth, and conceals the identity of image and logic in the minds of all men.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman.

The great effort of civilization has been, and still is, the attempt to introduce a principle of control into that casual swarm of impressions which makes up men's thought and of which, especially with swayed by emotion, spontaneous action is the law.