Quotes
Quotes about Wit
The honey-bee that wanders all day long The field, the woodland, and the garden o'er, To gather in his fragrant winter store, Humming in calm content his winter song, Seeks not alone the rose's glowing breast, The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips, But from all rank and noxious weeds he sips The single drop of sweetness closely pressed Within the poison chalice.
The careful insect 'midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies.
"O bees, sweet bees!" I said; "that nearest field Is shining white with fragrant immortelles Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells."
Listen! O, listen! Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion; To which is fixed as an aim or butt Obedience; for so work the honeybees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king, and officers of sorts, Where some like magistrates correct at home, Others like merchants venture trade abroad, Others like soldiers armed in their stings Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds, Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor, Who, busied in his majesties, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone.
The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive.
The wild Bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, Now in a lily cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering.
Homer himself must beg if he want means, and as by report sometimes he did "go from door to door and sing ballads, with a company of boys about him."
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.
Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top.
With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top.
Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have. -Doris Mortman.
We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have-for their usefulness. -Thomas Merton.
Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being. -Ken Burns.
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval upon the ear In cadence sweet; now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells Where Memory slept.
These bells have been anointed, And baptized with holy water!
The bells themselves are the best of preachers, Their brazen lips are learned teachers, From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw, Shriller than trumpets under the Law, Now a sermon and now a prayer.
Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night, While the stars that oversprinkle All the Heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tingling of the bells.
And the Sabbath bell, That over wood and wild and mountain dell Wanders so far, chasing all thoughts unholy With sounds most musical, most melancholy.
Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! Concordia is the world we've found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh, That unmatched form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy.
How like the leper, with his own sad cry Enforcing his own solitude, it tolls! That lonely bell set in the rushing shoals, To warn us from the place of jeopardy!
