The secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of oblivion. They are out of sight, but without them no superstructure can stand secure.
Ah! What would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
As Unto the bow the the cord is, So unto the man is woman; Though she bends him, she obeys him, Though she draws him, yet she follows: Useless each without the other.
The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning – an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.
They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.
Into each life some rain must fall.
Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention that man’s enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
Death is better than disease.
Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person’s mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
People demand freedom only when they have no power.