Quotes About Insight

No book has worth by itself, but by the relation to what you have from many other books, it weighs.

Genius is religious.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure," but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any other than such.

That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.

we are what we know.

He is a dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality and force of magic, as well as of chemistry.

As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.

It is not length of life, but depth of life

There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit.

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them.

For the secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.

so much of nature as he is ignorant of,so much of his own mind does not yet posess

If only I have right of seeing In this wilderness of being And from the vision glorious Must come back to my lonely house.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil

Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The telltale body is all tongues.

And, in fine, the ancient precept, "Know thyself," and the modern precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

In the words of a great writer, we find our own neglected thoughts.

The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

As the eyes of Lyncæus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.

The years teach much which the days never knew!

Good books replace the best universities.

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.