Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.
The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.
Difficulties exist to be surmounted.
The magnificent lobby of the Chrysler Building - faced with rare marbles, aglitter with decorative metalwork, and surmounted by a ceiling painted with a totemic image of the tower itself - leads to elevator cabs inlaid with exotic woods in fanciful patterns. The entire route from street to office is invested with ceremony, dignity, and delight.
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
It is only with prudence, sagacity, and much dexterity that great aims are accomplished, and all obstacles surmounted. Otherwise nothing is accomplished.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J. F. ] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and surmounted.
Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.
In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown.
If being an anti-art artist is difficult, being an anti-art art historian is a hard position indeed. His doctrinal revolutionism brings forth nothing new in art but reenacts upheavals on the symbolic plane of language. It provides the consoling belief that overthrows are occurring as in the past, that barriers to creation are being surmounted, and that art is pursuing a radical purpose, even if it is only the purpose of doing away with itself.
