Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life.
Thomas Carlyle,Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), Lecture 1: "The Hero As Divinity" (5 May 1840).
Let others hail the rising sun: I bow to that whose course is run.
David Garrick,On the Death of Mr. Pelham (1754), as reprinted inArthur Murphy,The life of David Garrick (1801), Vol. 1, p. 485.
The staleness of custom weakens admiration, and a mediocrity that's new often eclipses the highest excellence grown old.
"Not to admire, is all the art I know (Plain truth, dear Murray, needs few flowers of speech) To make men happy, or to keep them so," (So take it in the very words of Creech) Thus Horace wrote we all know long ago; And thus Pope quotes the precept to re-teach From his translation; but had none admired, Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?
