Voices of the Muses

“For this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration.”

“For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.”

“axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.”

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

“Nay, I will live--live for music--the highest thing in life except true love! Both make me utterly miserable but at least I shall have lived!”

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”

“That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

“O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.”

“He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust.”

“But you, though you are not yet a Socrates, ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates.”

“Therefore, we should decide what we wish, and abide by the decision.”

“One knows what one has to do; there’s an abundance of subjects and Carlyle rightly says, Blessed is he who has found his work.”