“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

“Tomorrow, a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time.”

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

“The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect, of my strength. They admonish me that the gleams which flash across my mind are not mine, but God's; they had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision”

“I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.”

“When I read a good book, I wish my life were three thousand years long.”