Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living.