“With rushing winds and gloomy skies The dark and stubborn Winter dies: Far-off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, Bidding her earliest child arise; March!”

The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.

Pens carry further than rifled cannon.

Life lives only in success.

Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be? Who knows, far out upon the central sea, That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore Has set behind us, and will rise before: A past foretells a future.

Alone each heart must cover up its dead; Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.

And far and wide, in a scarlet tide, The poppy’s bonfire spread.

Learn to live, and live to learn, Ignorance like a fire doth burn, Little tasks make large return.

Although Damascus is considered the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near it.

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici.

Love’s humility is love’s true pride.

The hollows are heavy and dank With the steam of the Goldenrods.

He teaches best, Who feels the hearts of all men in his breast, And knows their strength or weakness through his own.

Women are not apt to be won by the charms of verse.

The healing of the world is in its nameless saints. Each separate star seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars break up the night and make it beautiful.

Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,– Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,– Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.

But who will watch my lilies, When their blossoms open white? By day the sun shall be sentry, And the moon and the stars by night!

So dark energy could not be seen until we could measure things very, very far away.

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.

Until the 1990s, there were few reliable observations about movement at the scale of the entire universe, which is the only scale dark energy effects.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

George Bush is just as much in the dark as I am, and it scares me.

Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.

The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us.

Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.