Creeds of terror.
A serious ape whom none take seriously,
Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts
By hard buffoonery.
His smile is sweetened by his gravity.
Certain winds will make men's temper bad.
Sad as a wasted passion.
Knightly love is blent with reverence
As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue.
Inclination snatches arguments
To make indulgence seem judicious choice.
Perhaps the wind
Wails so in winter for the summers dead,
And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries
For what has been and is not.
Who can prove
Wit to be witty when with deeper ground
Dulness intuitive declares wit dull?
Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence.
It's but little good you'll do watering last year's crops.
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness.
Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain. No art can make it: it must spring Where elements are fostering. So in heaven's spot and hour Springs the little native flower, Downward root and upward eye, Shapen by the earth and sky.
What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm But the harm does not interest them.
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: Humility is endless.
You are never too old to be what you might have been.
I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave.