The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. - Henry James

In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.

...I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of storybooks and fairy tales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half replaced and half utilised, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!

Be not afraid of life believe that life is worth living and your belief will create the fact.