Quotes
Quotes about Sin
Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,--a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and the parting day linger and play on its summit!
Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.
It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,--Independence now and Independence forever.
The gentleman has not seen how to reply to this, otherwise than by supposing me to have advanced the doctrine that a national debt is a national blessing.
Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it?--No! 't was but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
Better to sink beneath the shock
Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.
Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar.
For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions by a wager.
The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.
Oh "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue!"
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.
That all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul,--the dinner bell.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.
All human history attests
That happiness for man,--the hungry sinner!--
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.
Go, forget me! why should sorrow
O'er that brow a shadow fling?
Go, forget me, and to-morrow
Brightly smile and sweetly sing!
Smile,--though I shall not be near thee;
Sing,--though I shall never hear thee!
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,
Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die?
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
