Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God.

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

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.

It is more beautiful to trust in God. The beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he loves me.

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.

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.

What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.

Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.

Pride is never so loud as when in chains.

Religion is merely the law which binds man to his Creator: in purity it has but these elements--God, the Soul, and their Mutual Recognition; out of which, when put in practise, spring Worship, Love, and Reward.

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.

Believing in God, invisible yet supreme, I also believed it possible so to yearn for him with all my soul that he would take compassion and give me answer.

We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

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.

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.

From the depths of the well I had discovered a light above, and yearned to go up and see what all it shone upon. At last--ah, with what years of toil!--I stood in the perfect day, and beheld the principle of life, the element of religion, the link between the soul and God--Love!

Father of all--God!--what we have here is of thee; take our thanks and bless us, that we may continue to do thy will.

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.

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence.

Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.

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.

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.

For to-day I take or give; For to-day I drink and live; For to-day I beg or borrow; Who knows about the silent morrow?

For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.

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.

The most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its beginning, making it impossible to say, This is the commencement, that the end.

for I thought there was a relation between God and the soul as yet unknown. On this theme the mind can reason to a point, a dead, impassable wall; arrived there, all that remains is to stand and cry aloud for help.