The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature – art can go no further.
For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.
Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.
They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling.
They are like men: if bold, the better of scolding; if timid, the better of praise and flattery.
Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.
It was then I saw thy mother, and loved her, and took her away in my secret heart.
In every four there is one the slowest, and one the swiftest; and while the race is always to the slowest, the trouble is always with the swiftest.
There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it.
We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.