quotes from "Autocrat", part I

[fiefoe]

• A weak flavor of genius .. spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.
  
• Fellows.. always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs... Is not my thought the abstract of ten thousands of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech?
• I always respected the title ("Treatise on Solitude") and let the book alone.
• Conceit... is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, ... when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.
• The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance... A great calamity... stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem to have lived.
  
• Life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pass current.
  
• Love should be both rich and rosy, but must be either rich or rosy.