He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break. - Thomas Hardy

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the long and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if they want to succeed in it — not giving way to over-much admiration for the flowers they see growing in other people's borders; which I am afraid has been my case.' He looked into the far distance and paused.

Misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror.