Quotes
Quotes about Man
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.
A weapon that comes down as still
As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
But executes a freeman's will,
As lightning does the will of God;
And from its force nor doors nor locks
Can shield you,--'t is the ballot-box.
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.
Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one.
He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture.
The sky is changed,--and such a change! O night
And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder.
The cold, the changed, perchance the dead, anew,
The mourn'd, the loved, the lost,--too many, yet how few!
Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
There were his young barbarians all at play;
There was their Dacian mother: he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday!
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin,--his control
Stops with the shore.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy.
I wantoned with thy breakers,
. . . . .
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane,--as I do here.
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all save the spirit of man is divine?
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.
The many still must labour for the one.
Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man,
And broke the die, in moulding Sheridan.
O God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood.
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.
Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest.
Her stature tall,--I hate a dumpy woman.
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'T is woman's whole existence.
