The Greatest Fault Is To Be Conscious

For The Superior Morality, Of Which We Hear So Much, We Too Would Desire To Be Thankful: At The Same Time, It Were But Blindness To Deny That This Superior Morality Is Properly Rather An Inferior Criminality, Produced Not By Greater Love Of Virtue, But By Greater Perfection Of Police; And Of That Far Subtler And Stronger Police, Called Public Opinion.

Venerable To Me Is The Hard Hand,--crooked, Coarse,--wherein, Notwithstanding, Lies A Cunning Virtue, Indispensably Royal As Of The Sceptre Of The Planet.

We Have Our Little Theory On All Human And Divine Things. Poetry, The Workings Of Genius Itself, Which, In All Times, With One Or Another Meaning, Has Been Called Inspiration, And Held To Be Mysterious And Inscrutable, Is No Longer Without Its Scientific Exposition. The Building Of The Lofty Rhyme Is Like Any Other Masonry Or Bricklaying: We Have Theories Of Its Rise, Height, Decline And Fall -- Which Latter, It Would Seem, Is Now Near, Among All People.

Nature Alone Is Antique, And The Oldest Art A Mushroom.

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books.