“Human nature must be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.”

“In every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea -- born in the human brain -- there always remains something -- some sediment -- which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.”

“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea—born in the human brain—there always remains something—some sediment—which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.”

“Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.”

“Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.”

“Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same”