Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy, and strangulation.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

There may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, — I and the abyss.