Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

We are all architects of faith, ever living in these walls of time.

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.

The twilight that surrounds the border-land of old romance.

The Nile, forever new and old, Among the living and the dead, Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.