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1 " Knowledge leaves no room for chances. "
― Lew Wallace , Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
2 " Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams. "
3 " The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature - art can go no further. "
4 " Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman. "
5 " They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling. "
6 " He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope --dream, if you will-- in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passion --the quarrel is with Fate. "
7 " Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others. "
8 " I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for him. I do not wonder at the change; yet”--her voice fell--“he might have dealt tenderly at least with you. It is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves. "
9 " Pride is never so loud as when in chains. "
10 " In every four there is one the slowest, and one the swiftest; and while the race is always to the slowest, the trouble is always with the swiftest. "
11 " There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or in the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is history. "
12 " There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. "
13 " We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers. "
14 " The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others. "
15 " Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God. "
16 " The four sprang forward affrighted. No hand had ever been laid upon them except in love; they had been nurtured ever so tenderly; and as they grew, their confidence in man became a lesson to men beautiful to see. What should such dainty natures do under such indignity but leap as from death? Forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car. Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy eccentric lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery. "
17 " A word as to the pleasure there is in the thought of a Soul in each of us. In the first place, it robs death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life. "
18 " Heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by human wisdom, but by Faith, Love, and Good Works. "
19 " To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble. "
20 " Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams. "
