The most lamentable spectacle in the world is a dead man. [ Proverb ]

A brave spirit struggling with adversity is a spectacle for the gods. [ Seneca ]

There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle is nobler than a blaze. [ Johnson ]

A man without earnestness is a mournful and perplexing spectacle. But it is a consolation to believe, as we must of such a one, that he is the most effectual and compulsive of all schools. [ Sterling ]

Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another's flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure. [ Carlyle ]

I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. [ Emerson ]