"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then..." - Quote by Walt Whitman

“An electric chain seems to vibrate, as it were, between our brain and him or her preserved there [in a Daguerreotype] so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality.”

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”

“You will never enjoy life if you do not enjoy yourself.”

“A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.”

“I don't have to hear that criticism, that idotic criticism anymore.”

“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”

“What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.”

“Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.”