I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such … - Ralph Waldo Emerson

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is unique.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.