We waste our best years in distilling the sweetest flowers of life into potions which, after all, do not immortalize, but only intoxicate.

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Dreams or illusions, call them what you will, they lift us from the commonplace of life to better things.

The world loves a spice of wickedness.

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

Time, like a preacher in the days of the Puritans, turned the hour-glass on his high pulpit, the church belfry.