For the great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth; resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions; and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may.

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish essayist and historian

“Jean Paul Friedrich Richter,” Edinburgh Review No. 91, Art. 7 (1827-06)
    (Source)

A review of Heinrich Döring, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of His Works (1826).