Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity.

Shelley (Adonaïs LII).

Two of the most marvellous lines in all literature. With them as a text volumes might be written.


Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, and was late of rising, said he believed the man of civilization who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain in littles in shaving every day than a woman with a large family had from her lyings-in.

John Brown (Horae Subsecivae I, 457).


Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.