Quotes
Quotes about Day
The Blossoms and leaves in plenty From the apple tree fall each day; The merry breezes approach them, And with them merrily play.
The first of April, some do say Is set apart for All Fools' day; But why the people call it so, Nor I, nor they themselves, do know.
Oh, the lovely fickleness of an April day!
Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir! When thy flowery hand delivers All the mountain-prisoned rivers, And thy great heart beats and quivers, To revive the days that were.
A gush of bird-song, a patter of dew, A cloud, and a rainbow's warning, Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue-- An April day in the morning.
When I lately stood with a friend before [the cathedral of] Amiens, . . . he asked me how it happens that we can no longer build such piles? I replied: "Dear Alphonse, men in those days had convictions (Ueberzeugungen), we moderns have opinions (Meinungen) and it requires something more than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.
In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere.
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
One day the world will look upon research on animals as it now looks upon research on human beings. Da Vinci.
The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.
And God made two great lights, great for their use To man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night, altern.
When thou cam'st first, Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee And showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.
Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away--Is this the whole?
But every fool describes, in these bright days, His wondrous journey to some foreign court, And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise,-- Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hole, telling how it pass'd O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt.
The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; O'er the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days.
Third act of the eternal play! In poster-like emblazonries "Autumn once more begins today"-- 'Tis written all across the trees In yellow like Chinese.
The year's in wane; There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning!
This sunlight shames November where he grieves In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun The day, though bough with bough be overrun. But with a blessing every glade receives High salutation.
He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on And smile, thou little, young inheritor Of a world scarce less young: sleep on and smile! Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering And innocent!
How lovely he appears! his little cheeks In their pure incarnation, vying with The rose leaves strewn beneath them. And his lips, too, How beautifully parted! No; you shall not Kiss him; at least not now; he will wake soon-- His hour of midday rest is nearly over.
There came to port last Sunday night The queerest little craft, Without an inch of rigging on; I looked and looked--and laughed. It seemed so curious that she Should cross the unknown water, And moor herself within my room-- My daughter! O my daughter!
"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand. It is bad to rock the baby, they would have us understand; So the cradle's but a relic of the former foolish days, When mothers reared their children in unscientific ways; When they jounced them and they bounced them, those poor dwarfs of long ago-- The Washingtons and Jeffersons, you know.
