“What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.”

“Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye, a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys, if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.”

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”

“It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.”

“It has come to this, that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature.”