Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two-hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.
Oh glory, that we wrestle
So valiantly with Time!
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments;
And much delight of battle with my peers
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,--
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
And topples round the dreary west
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
Ring in the nobler modes of life
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use.
Gorgonized me from head to foot,
With a stony British stare.
It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
