“How many minds–almost all the great ones–were formed in secrecy and solitude!”

If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.

Tis not to see the world As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, The years that are not more.

And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!

Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.

Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.

But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.

For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion.

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Once read thy own breast right, And thou hast done with fears.

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

The brave, impetuous heart yields everywhere to the subtle, contriving head.

They… who await. No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.

We see with what keenness and zeal the frivolous business of Freemasons is conducted, by persons knit together by the secrecy of their union.

For thus it is better secured from the oppression of the ruling powers, and because this secrecy gives a greater zest to the whole.

The only ones to profit from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing are the owners of the fishing fleets who remain hidden behind veils of corporate secrecy.

I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.

I was thinking, “So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now.