“I know I am–that simplest bliss The millions of my brothers miss. I know the fortune to be born, Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.”

Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant.

Really,’ thought I, ‘we call Baltimore the ‘Monumental City’ for its two marble columns, and here is Edinburg with one at every street-corner!

Departed suns their trails of splendor drew Across departed summers: whispers came From voices, long ago resolved again Into the primeval Silence, and we twain, Ghosts of our present selves, yet still the same, As in a spectral mirror wandered there.

Fame is what you have taken, / Character’s what you give; / When to this truth you waken, / Then you begin to live.

And rest, that strengthens unto virtuous deeds, Is one with Prayer.

The glories of the possible are ours.

The loving are the daring.

The maxims tell you to aim at perfection, which is well; but it’s unattainable, all the same.

To Truth’s house there is a single door, which is experience.

Pansies in soft April rains Fill their stalks with honeyed sap Drawn from Earth’s prolific lap.

Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him.

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

Higher than the perfect song For which love longeth, Is the tender fear of wrong, That never wrongeth.

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

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one’s own.

And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens, Are singing the selfsame strain.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

There’s a need for a ritual and for real joy and real bliss. Real fun.

We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.

Past dreams of bliss our lives contain, And slight the chords that still retain A heart estranged to joys again,

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).

Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.

This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow.

It is not the pursuit of greater and greater states of happiness and bliss that leads to enlightenment, but the yearning for Reality and the rabid dissatisfaction with living anything less than a fully authentic life.