I would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

What moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.

As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.