The circumambient gloom But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom. - <i>Mycerinus</i> - Matthew Arnold

They... who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.

One must, I think, be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and far more still on what he reads during it.