Out of your whole life give but a moment! All of your life that has gone before, All to come after it, -so you ignore, So you make perfect the present, condense, In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment, Thought and feeling and soul and sense.
Robert BrowningIf you can sit at set of sun And count the deeds that you have done And counting find oneself-denying act, one word That eased the heart of him that heard. One glance most kind, Which fell like sunshine where he went, Then you may count that day well spent.
Robert BrowningEver judge of men by their professions. For though the bright moment of promising is but a moment, and cannot be prolonged, yet if sincere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, trust it, and know the man by it, I say,- not by his performance; which is half the world's work, interfere as the world needs must with its accidents and circumstances: the profession was purely the man's own. I judge people by what they might be,- not are, nor will be.
Robert Browning