Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village-green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene. Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play, And games and carols closed the busy day.
She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down And rest your gentle head upon her lap, And she will sing the song that pleaseth you And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep, Charming your brood with pleasing heaviness, Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep As is the difference betwixt day and night The hour before the heavenly-harnessed team Begins his golden progress in the east.
The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust.
O nation miserable, With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptred, When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again, Since that the truest issue of thy throne By his own interdiction stands accursed And does blaspheme his breed?
I knew him tyrannous; and tyrants' fears Decrease not, but grow faster than the years; And should he doubt it, as no doubt he doth, That I should open to the list'ning air How many worthy princes' bloods were shed To keep his bed of blackness unlaid ope, To lop that doubt, he'll fill this land with arms And make pretense of wrong that I have done him; When all, for mine, if I may call offense, Must feel war's blow, who spares not innocence; Which love to all, of which thyself art one, Who now reproved'st me for't--
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Once you can laugh at your own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Maybe you can combat some of the ugliness in the world.
We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree.
Of doues I haue a dainty paire Which, when you please to take the aier, About your head shall gently houer, Your cleere browe from the sunne to couer, And with their nimble wings shall fan you That neither cold nor heate shall tan you, And like umbrellas, with their feathers Sheeld you in all sorts of weathers.
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the acknowledged index of social position. . . . Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilized mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the individual who carries them. . . . May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas, that they go about the streets "with a lie in their right hand?" . . . Except in a very few cases of hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by nature, umbrellarians, have tried again and again to become so by art, and yet have failed--have expended their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet have systematically lost them, and have finally, with contrite spirits and strunken purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives.
Let a smile be your umbrella, and you'll end up with a face full of rain.
Life with Mary was like being in a telephone booth with an open umbrella no matter which way you turned, you got it in the eye.
All human things hang on a slender thread, the strongest fall with a sudden crash. [Lat., Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo: Et subito casu, quae valuere, ruunt.]
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed. That can make life a garden.
Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd? No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain; It only serves to prove the living vain.
The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job.
It is difficult to understand precisely what the state hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare and crime.
No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy.
When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?
It's great to work with somebody who wants to do things differently.
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.
Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky: Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die! Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel, The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!
