It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.

So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

Life - life - let there be life!

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.