“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

“We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.”

“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”

“To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone.”

“Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!”

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

“A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist”