All Quotes

"Send me no more reviews of any kind. — I will read no more of evil or good in that line. — Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years."

"Because He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter— Which I must feed on for a fault not mine."

"I live, But live to die: and, living, see no thing To make death hateful, save an innate clinging, A loathsome and yet all invincible Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I Despise myself, yet cannot overcome— And so I live. Would I had never lived!"

"That which I am, I am; I did not seek For life, nor did I make myself."

"Who killed John Keats? "I," says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; "'Twas one of my feats.""

"He seems To have seen better days, as who has not Who has seen yesterday?"

"What's drinking? A mere pause from thinking!"

"My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; The worm — the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!"

"Seek out — less often sought than found — A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best; Then look around and choose thy Ground, And take thy Rest."

"I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

"A great poet belongs to no country; his works are public property, and his Memoirs the inheritance of the public."

"Hands promiscuously applied, Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side."

"They never fail who die In a great cause."

"Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship."

"Lord of himself,—that heritage of woe!"

"It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whisper'd word."

"Yet in my lineaments they trace Some features of my father's face."

"Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred."

"Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones."

"I loved my country, and I hated him."

"Friendship is Love without wings."

"What say you to such a supper with such a woman?"

"I'll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song."

"'Tis pleasure, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't."

"A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure — critics are ready-made."

"With just enough of learning to misquote."

"As soon Seek roses in December, ice in June; Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; Believe a woman or an epitaph, Or any other thing that's false, before You trust in critics, who themselves are sore."

"Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye."

"Oh, Amos Cottle! Phœbus! what a name!"

"Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers, wooing the caress More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties—give me a cigar!"

"'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low: So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart."

"Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,— Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best."

"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!"

"Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?"

"The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the music breathing from her face, 19 The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,— And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!"

"Who hath not proved how feebly words essay To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess The might, the majesty of loveliness?"

"The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle."

"Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life, The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!"

"Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease! He makes a solitude, and calls it — peace!"

"Hark! to the hurried question of despair: "Where is my child?"—an echo answers, "Where?""

"He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,— The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers."

"Such is the aspect of this shore; 'T is Greece, but living Greece no more! So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there."

"Shrine of the mighty! can it be That this is all remains of thee?"

"For freedom's battle, once begun, Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

"And lovelier things have mercy shown To every failing but their own, And every woe a tear can claim Except an erring sister's shame."

"The keenest pangs the wretched find Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed."

"Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock."

"I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!"

"There is a Reaper, whose name is Death, And, with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between."

"Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath, The Reaper came that day; 'Twas an angel visited the green earth, And took the flowers away."