“There was a distinct class of these gentlemen tramps, young men no longer young, who wouldn't settle down, who disliked polite society and the genteel conventions, but hadn't enough intelligence or enough conceit to think themselves transcendentalists or poets, in the style of Thoreau or of Walt Whitman.”
“A habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and the impression that has not learned to express itself--all of which are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible soul.”
“The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals, but mad.”
“There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.”
“The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don’t make anybody long-lived or useful.”
“love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”
“The difficulty, after having the experience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such verbal expression that others may be able to decipher it, and to be stirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of their memories.”