“They are like men: if bold, the better of scolding; if timid, the better of praise and flattery.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
“They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
“Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
“For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
“The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature – art can go no further.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
“Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.”
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ