Quotes
Quotes about Wit
With patient inattention hear him prate.
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting;
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
The well of true wit is truth itself.
With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
This is my world! within these narrow walls,
I own a princely service.
Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!
To be young once more and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.
The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
And I met with a ballad, I can't say where,
That wholly consisted of lines like these.
The world is filled with folly and sin,
And Love must cling, where it can, I say:
For Beauty is easy enough to win;
But one is n't loved every day.
We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks.
He may live without books,--what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope--what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love,--what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?
The ages roll
Forward; and forward with them draw my soul
Into Time's infinite sea.
And to be glad or sad I care no more;
But to have done and to have been before
I cease to do and be!
Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man's heart within.
"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied, "and the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,--
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain!
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty--they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars--they are at peace. In the midst of battles, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death.
Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,
Slipped from my hold--thus plenty comes and goes.
One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand
(Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.
Give me to die unwitting of the day,
And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear!
Sound, jocund strains; on pipe and viol sound,
Young voices sing;
Wreathe every door with snow-white voices round,
For lo! 't is Spring!
Winter has passed with its sad funeral train,
And Love revives again.
The victories of Right
Are born of strife.
There were no Day were there no Night,
Nor, without dying, Life.
Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with.
His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world's soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty's white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.
With whisper of her mellowing grain,
With treble of brook and bud and tree,
Earth joys for ever to sustain
The bass eternal of the sea.
Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
Within a little time must ye go by.
Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give!
