'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.

In high vengeance there is noble scorn.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world.