The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence. - Thomas de Quincey

I was, indeed, greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen: and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek: which, at the same time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language; in which case, I doubted not to make it appear, that if I was not so rich as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian.

Let there be a patron like Maecenus, Flaccus, and your lands will give you a poet like Virgil

No terrors of impending vengeance, had they been a thousand time stronger than they were, could at this moment have availed to stifle the cry of triumphant pleasure -long, loud, and unfaltering- which indignant sympathy with the oppressed extorted from the crowd.