My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it

A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush’ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv’ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain’s reluctant shower, With big drops patt’ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,— All mark the coming of the thunder-storm!

What if I say that in my view about the least Christian thing you could do is what the Republican party are trying to doing again now, which is try to take charge of the richest country in the world and then deny the people of that country free access to free healthcare and free education and start more wars.

A universal beauty clothes the world, And one heart seems to beat for all mankind!

How oft, - be witness, Guardian of our days!... The sky besprinkled o'er with rainbow hues, As if angelic wings had wanton'd there.

Are there not hours of an immortal birth,— Bright visitations from a purer sphere, That cannot live in language? Is there not A mood of glory, when the mind attuned To heaven, can out of dreams create her worlds?—

Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now.