’When I look at my papers, I feel as if I had never had a thought that was worthy the attention of any but myself; and ’tis only when, on talking with people, I find I tell them what they did not know, that my confidence at all returns.’

* * * * *

’My verses,—­I am ashamed when I think there is scarce a line of poetry in them,—­all rhetorical and impassioned, as Goethe said of De Stael.  However, such as they are, they have been overflowing drops from the somewhat bitter cup of my existence.’

* * * * *

’How can I ever write with this impatience of detail?  I shall never be an artist; I have no patient love of execution; I am delighted with my sketch, but if I try to finish it, I am chilled.  Never was there a great sculptor who did not love to chip the marble.’

* * * * *

    ’I have talent and knowledge enough to furnish a dwelling for
    friendship, but not enough to deck with golden gifts a Delphi
    for the world.’

* * * * *

’Then a woman of tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men.  They are astonished at our instincts.  They do not see where we got our knowledge; and, while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel, and fly, and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the weak points, like Saladin in the desert.  It is quite another thing when we come to write, and, without suggestion from another mind, to declare the positive amount of thought that is in us.  Because we seemed to know all, they think we can tell all; and, finding we can tell so little, lose faith in their first opinion of us, which, nathless, was true.’

And again: 

’These gentlemen are surprised that I write no better, because I talk so well.  But I have served a long apprenticeship to the one, none to the other.  I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired.  The means are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never.  I shall not be discouraged, nor take for final what they say, but sift from it the truth, and use it.  I feel the strength to dispense with all illusions.  I will stand steady, and rejoice in the severest probations.’

* * * * *

’What a vulgarity there seems in this writing for the multitude!  We know not yet, have not made ourselves known to a single soul, and shall we address those still more unknown?  Shall we multiply our connections, and thus make them still more superficial?

’I would go into the crowd, and meet men for the day, to help them for the day, but for that intercourse which most becomes us.  Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Cleone, is circle wide enough for me.  I should think all the resources