"Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”

“Artists must be sacrificed to their art.”

“I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men.”

“Great intellects are skeptical.”

“Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.”

“Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.”

“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”

“Genius is when an idea and the execution of that idea are simultaneous.”

“I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope that it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.”