All Quotes

"United States! the ages plead, — Present and Past in under-song, — Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue."

"I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension."

"England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame."

"Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays."

"Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes."

"Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm."

"He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread."

"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill."

"Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great."

"For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates."

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands."

"It is time to be old, To take in sail: — The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!"

"Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime."

"Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, — "'T is man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die.""

"If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again."

"Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame."

"They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings."

"In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part."

"Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow."

"The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech."

"Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!"

"A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes; The lover rooted stays."

"What potent blood hath modest May!"

"And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form."

"And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide."

"Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die."

"God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth."

"We boil at different degrees."

"The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs."

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."

"The days .... come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away."

"Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?"

"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

"Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science."

"A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," — "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day.""

"'Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear."

"Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."

"We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

"There is no knowledge that is not power."

"Hitch your wagon to a star."

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."

"The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most."

"The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun."

"Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration."

"A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal."

"Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it."

"Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age."

"Nothing can be preserved that is not good."