Famous quotes containing the words mercury, free and/or led:
“The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendour.”
—Sydney Smith (17711845)
“There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of lifes circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehementlywithout his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)