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England's genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.
--
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Solution," lines 35–42, Poems (1918), p. 222. These lines are inscribed above the fireplace in the old reading room of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

 

William Shakespeare

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England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.

 

William Shakespeare

 

Some opulent force of genius, soul, and race,
Some deep life-current from far centuries
Flowed to his mind and lighted his sad eyes,
And gave his name, among great names, high place.

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn’t money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn’t fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer

 

Christians were mocked for imagining that man is important in the vast scheme of the universe, even the high point of all creation — and yet my father thought man and his preservation the most important thing in the world, and he lived in hopes of a better life to come. He was by temperament a profoundly religious man, a sort of passionate moralist who would have been a saint in a more believing age. I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God... Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put it in.

 

Bertrand Russell