When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away, And in a dream as in a fairy bark Drift on and on through the enchanted dark To purple daybreak--little thought we pay To that sweet bitter world we know by day.
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Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows In yonder West: the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes, And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.
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Books that have become classics -- books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal -- always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
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What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
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To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age.
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Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant.
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The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest of human creature that walks.
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The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
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The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
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Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.
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They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
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To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
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