Key

Famous quotes containing the word key:

    At the last, tenderly,
    From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
    From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
    Let me be wafted.

    Let me glide noiselessly forth;
    With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
    Set ope the doors O soul.
    Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    I cannot tell what I am as much afraid of, as a woman who invariably washes on Monday. It is a kind of key to character; and if her mouth is not puckered and her brow wrinkled, they will be, unless she repents.
    Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)

    The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is—Imbecility: imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments: victims of gravity, customs and fear. This gives force to the strong,—that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)