Age wins and one must learn to grow old.... I must learn to walk this long unlovely wintry way, looking for spectacles, shunning t...he cruel looking-glass, laughing at my clumsiness before others mistakenly condole, not expecting gallantry yet disappointed to receive none, apprehending every ache of shaft of pain, alive to blinding flashes of mortality, unarmed, totally vulnerable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer... The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep; perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a man of sense happens to be in that disagreeable situation in which he is obliged to ask himself more than once, What shall ...I do? he will answer himself, Nothing. When his reason points out to him no good way, he will stop short, and wait for light. A little busy mind runs on at all events, must be doing; and, like a blind horse, fears no dangers, because he sees none. Il faut scavoir s'ennuïer.*LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematic...s of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shams, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is u...seful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »