A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make...
Might could would-they are contemptible auxiliaries.
Wishes are held to be ominous; according to which belief the order of the world is so arranged that if you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is more likely to be born with one; als...
If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.
And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you...
We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of...
The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as me...
Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
In spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one...
But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.
A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.
A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.
Speech may be barren but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.
Time like money is measured by our needs.
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action and they will have it if they cannot find it.
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.