Quotes
Quotes about Sin
O thrush, your song is passing sweet
But never a song that you have sung,
Is half so sweet as thrushes sang
When my dear Love and I were young.
The enthusiastic and pleasing illusions of youth.
But I account it worth
All pangs of fair hopes crost--
All loves and honors lost,--
To gain the heavens, at cost
Of losing earth.
He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in Spring than in any other season. In the Spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.
What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
You have a daughter, Captain Reese,
Ten female cousins and a niece,
A ma, if what I'm told is true,
Six sisters and an aunt or two.
Now, somehow, Sir, it seems to me,
More friendly-like we all should be
If you united of them to
Unmarried members of the crew.
On a tree by a river a little tomtit
Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow"
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'
"Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried,
"Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?"
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur.
Her mouth is a honey-blossom,
No doubt, as the poet sings;
But within her lips, the petals,
Lurks a cruel bee that stings.
I think that saving a little child
And bringing him to his own,
Is a derned sight better business
Than loafing around the throne.
The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.
Ah Sin was his name.
The windy lights of Autumn flare;
I watch the moonlit sails go by;
I marvel how men toil and fare,
The weary business that they play!
Their voyaging is vanity,
And fairy gold is all their gain,
And all the winds of winter cry,
"My Love returns no more again."
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring.
The little toy-dog is covered with dust
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy-soldier is red with rust
And his musket moulds in his hands;
Time was when the little toy-dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
Men have dulled their eyes with sin,
And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt,
And built their temple-walls to shut thee in,
And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.
The blessing of earth is toil.
I have need of the sky,
I have business with the grass;
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass.
I will get me away to the woods.
The gods are growing old;
The stars are singing Golden hair to gray
Green leaf to yellow leaf,--or chlorophyl
To xanthophyl, to be more scientific.
Single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.
When 'Omer smote 'is blooming lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took--the same as we!
There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of Londontown.
Chance cannot touch me! Time cannot hush me!
Fear, hope, and longing, at strife,
Sink as I rise, on, on, upward forever,
Gathering strength, gaining breath,--naught can sever
Me from the Spirit of Life!
Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer!
List, ye landsmen all, to me;
Messmates, hear a brother sailor
Sing the dangers of the sea.
