Life Has A Way Of Demanding That

The Moment Our Discourse Rises Above The Ground-line Of Familiar Facts, And Is Inflamed With Passion Or Exalted Thought, It Clothes Itself In Images. A Man Conversing In Earnest, If He Watch His Intellectual Processes, Will Find That Always A Material Image, More Or Less Luminous, Arises In His Mind, Contemporaneous With Every Thought, Which Furnishes The Vestment Of The Thought.... This Imagery Is Spontaneous. It Is The Blending Of Experience With The Present Action Of The Mind. It Is Proper Creation.

In Talking With Scholars, I Observe That They Lost On Ruder Companions Those Years Of Boyhood Which Alone Could Give Imaginative Literature A Religious And Infinite Quality In Their Esteem.

Rings And Other Jewels Are Not Gifts, But Apologies For Gifts. The Only Gift Is A Portion Of Thyself.

Why Needs A Man Be Rich? Why Must He Have Horses, Fine Garments, Handsome Apartments, Access To Public Houses, And Places Of Amusement? Only For Want Of Thought.

There Are Moods In Which We Court Suffering, In The Hope That Here, At Least, We Shall Find Reality, Sharp Peaks And Edges Of Truth. But It Turns Out To Be Scene-painting And Counterfeit. The Only Thing Grief Has Taught Me Is To Know How Shallow It Is.