Then from the neighboring thicket the mockingbird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water. Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.

it keeps me from the street.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

Men's minds are as variant as their faces. Where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable.

A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character.

The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.

I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

When Misfortune is asleep, let no one wake her.

What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.

For God to explain a trial would be to destroy its purpose, calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience.

Whoever has fallen from his former high estate is in his calamity the scorn even of the base.

Phidias made the statue of Venue at Elis with one foot upon the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep home and be silent.

Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every people sphere? Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here.

In the 1930s people went to see films not just to be entertained or to escape the dreariness of their workaday lives but to gain an education, to see the world, to learn table manners and interior decoration, how to dress, kiss, to laugh and cry, how to react to tragedy and happiness, how to be brave, evil and good.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.