Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter.

It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

And there are Ben [Jonson] and William Shakespeare in wit-combat, sure enough; Ben bearing down like a mighty Spanish war-ship, fraught with all learning and artillery; Shakespeare whisking away from him - whisking right through him, athwart the big bulk and timbers of him; like a miraculous Celestial Light-ship, woven all of sheet-lightning and sunbeams!

History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself.

One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore!