A person of genius should marry a person of character. Genius does not herd with genius.

Talent is a very common family trait; genius belongs rather to individuals-just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute.

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or, to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.

The worst of a modern stylish mansion is, that it has no place for ghosts.

Rough work, iconoclasm,-but the only way to get at truth.

We must not roughly smash other people's idols because we know, or think we know, that they are of cheap human manufacture.

Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.