Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for the development of personal character, but you must not.

Neither Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea.

And this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake.

The visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to his epoch, is an egoist?
Is a mother selfish when she immolates all things to her child?
Well, the detractors of genius do not perceive its fecund maternity, that is all.

The life of a poet is so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to bear even the ordinary pleasures of life.