There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit.
Why impress false religion on the world? It will be of no service to it. Why run about for the sake of wealth? You cannot escape from death… Think, O think, you thoughtless fool, you shall have in the end to depart alone.
You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by.
We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
