Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.
Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.
Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged.
Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life.
And striving to be Man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.
The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.
This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one’s actions.
Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough for literature. – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The reality is more excellent than the report.
No book was ever written down by any but itself.
Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.
The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musican, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce.
The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tablets yet unbroken: The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind.
A person’s life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.
Had I but written as many odes in praise of Muhammad and Ali as I have composed for King Mahmud, they would have showered a hundred blessings on me.
The true ship is the ship builder.
I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.