All Quotes

"But oh, how slowly minutes roll When absent from her eyes, That feed my love, which is my soul: It languishes and dies."

"The clog of all pleasure, the luggage of life, Is the best can be said for a very good wife."

"Great Negative, how vainly would the Wise Enquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise, Didst thou not stand to point their dull Philosophies?Is, or is not, the Two great Ends of Fate, And, true or false, the Subject of Debate, That perfect, or destroy, the vast Designs of Fate."

"The Elephant is never won with Anger, Nor must that man, who would reclaim a Lion, Take him by the teeth."

"We have a pretty witty king, Whose word no man relies on; He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one."

"But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit."

"For love is a flattering mischief, that hath denied aged and wise men a foresight of those evils that too often prove to be the children of that blind father; a passion, that carries us to commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds move feathers, and begets in us an unwearied industry to the attainment of what we desire."

"The great secretary of Nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon."

"God has two dwellings — one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart."

"I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing."

"Of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge."

"Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt."

"As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler."

"I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing."

"As the Italians say, Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter."

"I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle."

"It [angling] deserves commendations;… it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man."

"Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice"

"Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself."

"Sir Henry Wotton was a most dear lover and a frequent practiser of the Art of Angling; of which he would say, "'T was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;" and "that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.""

"Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration."

"You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it."

"I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business.""

"Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue."

"An excellent angler, and now with God."

"Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."

"I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning."

"No man can lose what he never had."

"We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did"; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling."

"Thus use your frog...Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;...and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him."

"This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men."

"Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy."

"Let the blessing of St. Peter's Master be...upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his Providence, and be quiet and go a-angling."

"Oh, the gallant fisher's life! It is the best of any; 'T is full of pleasure, void of strife, And 't is beloved by many."

"The real drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it—lies among the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather than in the mighty?"

"My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy."

"If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally."

"I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still — "ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit" the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them."

"I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best."

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."

"'Tis God gives skill, But not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio."

"Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies, and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: —"

"I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear."

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact."

"The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness."

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

"The difficulty is, to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state."

"May I unceasingly aspire to unclothe all around me of its conventional, human, temporary dress, to look at it in its essence and in its relation to eternity."

"Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion."