Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm.

What discord we should bring into the universe if our prayers were all answered. Then we should govern the world and not God. And do you think we should govern it better? It gives me only pain when I hear the long, wearisome petitions of people asking for they know not what. . . . Thanks-giving with a full heart-and the rest silence and submission to the divine will!

Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow.

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of books.

Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.

And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox.

As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.