The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
I will be a man among men; and no longer a dreamer among shadows.
When you ask one friend to dine, Give him your best wine! When you ask two, The second best will do!
Where’er a noble deed is wrought, Where’er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise.
If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
There are no birds in last year’s nest.
Frost kills the flowers that bloom out of season...
Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth.
His imagination seemed still to exhaust itself in running, before it tried to leap the ditch. While he mused, the fire burned in other brains. Other hands wrote the books he dreamed about. He freely used his good ideas in conversation, and in letters; and they were straightway wrought into the texture of other men’s books, and so lost to him for ever.
Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labor well begun, And not perplexed and multiplied, By idly waiting for time and tide!
Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal.
Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of passions contending; Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship wounded and bleeding, Passionate cries of desire, and importunate pleadings of duty!
We are very like the English, – are, in fact, English under a different sky.
O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!
Yes, Death brings us again to our friends. They are waiting for us, and we shall not long delay. They have gone before us, and are like the angels in heaven. They stand near the borders of the grave to welcome us, with the countenance of affection, which they wore on earth; yet more lovely, more radiant, more spiritual! O, he spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels!
If you knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
I see you still stand a little in awe of opinion. Never fear that. The strength of criticism lies only in the weakness of the thing criticised.
I found myself within a forest dark, For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.
Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!