Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray.
|
Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death -- of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
|
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term 'visiting hours' didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right Will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read 'Oliver Twist?' And I don't buy the argument that you don't want to be here, because I think you like all the attention you're getting. Personally, I don't care. There's nothing you can tell me that I can't read somewhere else. Unless we talk about your life. But you won't do that. Maybe you're afraid of what you might say.
|
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life! each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save.
|
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
|
Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ill a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade A breath can make them, as a breath has made but a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied.
|
She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.
|
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
|
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
|
Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
|
I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.
|
Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.
|
Husband and wife come to look alike at last
|
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
|
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
Friendship
|
Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.
|
The dancing pair that simply sought renown,By holding out to tire each other downThe swain mistrustless of his smutted face,While secret laughter titter'd round the placeThe bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,The matrons glance that would those looks reproveThese were thy charms, sweet village sports like these,With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to pleaseThese were thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,These were thy charms -- but all these charms are fled.
|
The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.
|
Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
|
Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!
|
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
|
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
|
When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.
|
The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.
|
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
|
Crime generally punishes itself.
|
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
|
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
|
Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
|
No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul it takes one that knows it well -- parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.
|