Quotes
Quotes about Wit
It is something to hold the scepter with a firm hand. [Lat., Est aliquid valida sceptra tenere manu.]
The gates of monarchs Are arched so high that giants may jet through And keep their impious turbans on without Good morrow to the sun.
At length her grace rose and with modest paces Came to the altar, where she kneeled, and saint-like Cast her fair eyes to heaven and prayed devoutly; Then rose again and bowed her to the people; When by the Archbishop of Canterbury She had all the royal makings of a queen, As holy oil, Edward Confessor's crown, The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems Laid nobly on her; which performed, the choir With all the choicest music of the kingdom Together sung 'Te Deum.' So she parted And with the same full state packed back again To York Place, where the feast is held.
We will ourself in person to this war; And, for our coffers, with too great a court And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, We are enforced to farm our royal realm, The revenue whereof shall furnish us For our affairs in hand.
For God's sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings! How some have been deposed, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed-- All murdered; for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence, Throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, Need friends. Subjected thus,
I give this heavy weight from off my head And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand, The pride of kingly sway from out my heart. With mine own tears I wash away my balm, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state, With mine own breath release all duty's rites.
Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.
When I have been indulging this thought I have, in imagination, seen the Britons of some future century, walking by the banks of the Thames, then overgrown with weeds and almost impassable with rubbish. The father points to his son where stood St. Paul's, the Monument, the Bank, the Mansion House, and other places of the first distinction.
And when 'midst fallen London they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humble pride the lesson just By Time's slow finger written in the dust.
And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed: And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights: And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.
There is a temple in ruins stands, Fashion'd by long forgotten hands: Two or three columns, and many a stone, Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown!
What cities, as great as this, have . . . promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others others. . . . Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruins.
The ruins of himself! now worn away With age, yet still majestic in decay.
For, to make deserts, God, who rules mankind, Begins with kings, and ends the work by wind.
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
For such a numerous host Fled not in silence through the frighted deep With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded.
And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.
Rumor is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it.
Straightway throughout the Libyan cities flies rumor;--the report of evil things than which nothing is swifter; it flourishes by its very activity and gains new strength by its movements; small at first through fear, it soon raises itself aloft and sweeps onward along the earth. Yet its head reaches the clouds. . . . A huge and horrid monster covered with many feathers: and for every plume a sharp eye, for every pinion a biting tongue. Everywhere its voices sound, to everything its ears are open. [Lat., Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes: Fama malum quo non velocius ullum; Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo; Parva metu primo; mox sese attollit in auras, Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubilia condit. . . . . Monstrum, horrendum ingens; cui quot sunt corpore plumae Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu, Tot linquae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.]
The rumor forthwith flies abroad, dispersed throughout the small town. [Lat., Fama volat parvam subito vulgata per urbem.]
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
On Sundays, at the matin-chime, The Alpine peasants, two and three, Climb up here to pray; Burghers and dames, at summer's prime, Ride out to church from Chamberry, Dight with mantles gay, But else it is a lonely time Round the Church of Brou.
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.
So sang they, and the empyrean rung With Hallelujahs. Thus was Sabbath kept.
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
