Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of custom: but of all these perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous by simple repetition ceases to be miraculous.
Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.
Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim howling of wild beas...
Blessed is he who has found his work let him ask no other blessedness.
Skepticism means not intellectual doubt alone but moral doubt.
Man is a tool-using animal.
The end of man is action.
Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.
Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.
Silence is more eloquent than words.
Biography is the only true history.
Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
Poetry therefore we will call Musical Thought.
Silence is deep as Eternity speech shallow as Time.
Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.
History a distillation of rumor
Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.
Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
