Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.
If you have not even a little imagination, you are simply a brute. So you must not lower your ideal, neither are you to lose sight of practicality. We must avoid the two extremes.... You must try to combine in your life immense idealism with immense practicality.
But no one can lose sight of what he desires. Even if there are moments when he believes the world and the others are stronger. The secret is this: do not surrender.
It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.
The legislator must be in advance of his age.
Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.
But I hope that it will also be demonstrated soon that in my experiments in the West I was not merely beholding a vision, but had caught sight of a great and profound truth.