“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.”

Sweeter than the stolen kiss Are the granted kisses

From the desert I come to thee, On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire.

Peace the offspring is of Power.

The bravest are the most tender; the loving are the daring.

The Poet’s leaves are gathered one by one, In the slow process of the doubtful years.

To learn by observation is traveling, people must also bring knowledge with them.

London has the advantage of one of the most gloomy atmospheres in the world.

Labor, you know, is prayer.

Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force.

Mock jewelry on a woman is tangible vulgarity.

Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows – the south and east oriels – are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

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.

The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

Children’s bodies aren’t like automobiles with the assailant’s fingerprints lingering on the wheel.

My hairstyle role model is Manuel Neuer. His hair is always perfect.

As long as the body is not in perfect health, you think about it, and that prevents you from thinking of the mind. The sound mind is a sound body.

There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.

The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn’t perfect at any age – drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter – but it is almost non-existent in old people.

Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.

I am always worried when someone says, ‘This is perfect.’