Famous quotes containing the word fails:
“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“If fancy then
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do?”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)