And who are you?” cried one agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. “I know not” said the second Shape, “I only died last night.
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.
True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.
What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.
Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.
Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.
Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.
The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.
It is the Lord’s Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.
Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!
The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.
The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.