Quotes
Quotes about Man
But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.
I was not always a man of woe.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
O woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
Who o'er the herd would wish to reign,
Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain!
Vain as the leaf upon the stream,
And fickle as a changeful dream;
Fantastic as a woman's mood,
And fierce as Frenzy's fever'd blood.
Thou many-headed monster thing,
Oh who would wish to be thy king!
In man's most dark extremity
Oft succour dawns from Heaven.
Oh, many a shaft at random sent
Finds mark the archer little meant!
And many a word at random spoken
May soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!
Where lives the man that has not tried
How mirth can into folly glide,
And folly into sin!
Woman's faith and woman's trust,
Write the characters in dust.
When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies).
Once, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man.
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
It sounds like stories from the laud of spirits
If any man obtains that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
. . . . . . . . .
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,--love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,--
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,--
His eyes are in his mind.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths,--all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
"You are old, Father William," the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are gray;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,--
Now tell me the reason I pray."
What will not woman, gentle woman dare,
When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,--
A name which you all know by sight very well,
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,--
Therefore on him no speech! And brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with steps
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.
