Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?
Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.
For God will deign to visit oft the dwellings of just men -- delighted, and with frequent intercourse -- thither will send his winged messengers on errants of supernal grace.
We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.
Abraham Lincoln, White House speech 11 April 1865.
Or arm th' obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.