Great Endowments Often Announce Themselves In Youth

I Have Never Looked At Foreign Countries Or Gone There But With The Purpose Of Getting To Know The General Human Qualities That Are Spread All Over The Earth In Very Different Forms, And Then To Find These Qualities Again In My Own Country And To Recognize And To Further Them.

You Acquire A Language Most Readily In The Country Where It Is Spoken; You Study Mineralogy Best Among Miners; And So With Everything Else.

By Nature We Have No Defect That Could Not Become A Strength, No Strength That Could Not Become A Defect.

But What Is Your Duty? What The Day Demands. [ger., Was Aber Ist Deine Pflicht? Die Forderung Des Tages.]

It Used To Happen, And Still Happens, To Me To Take No Pleasure In A Work Of Art At The First Sight Of It, Because It Is Too Much For Me; But If I Suspect Any Merit In It, I Try To Get At It; And Then I Never Fail To Make The Most Gratifying Discoveries--to Find New Qualities In The Work Itself And New Faculties In Myself.